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Horror, tragedy and inhumanity have dominated 2024 and shown how unhinged and unregulated power can harm or destroy countries, governments, adults, children and babies. It can and often does demoralize, anger, and frustrate and paralyze us when it seems the small amount of power and agency we hold within ourselves can not course correcting injustice at work, government and in the world at large.
One of the students I tutored this week used the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, husband of Mary Shelley who wrote the gothic literary novel Frankenstein, in their English 101 essay. Shelley’s early 19th century sonnet described the monument of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II also known by his Greek appellation Ozymandias. The narrator in the poem discovers the battered and ruined remains of statue made of Ozymandias. The statue of Ozymandias and Ozymandias himself demonstrates that power held by anyone does not last and will deteriorate and vanish.
Reading the poem again made me think of current governmental figures, especially those not being held to account, and using the poem and any figure in power as a fun poetry writing exercise. This is also applicable to figures who do not hold a governmental role but hold power in some other way.
Shelley composed “Ozymandias” in a loose iambic pentameter. The sonnet’s rhyme scheme is ABABA CDCED EFEF. Mary Oliver in her A Poetry Handbook devotes a section to rhyme and its patterns:
Rhyming patterns include everything from simple rhyming couplets (line 1 rhymes with line 2, line 3 rhymes with line 4, and so forth) to the terza rima and the Spenserian stanza.
Here are a few rhyming patterns:
Couplet: aa bb cc dd, etc.
Tercet, or Triplet: aaa bbb ccc ddd, etc.
Quatrain: abab cdcd, etc.
Terza Rima: aba bcb cdc ded, etc.
Spenserian Stanza:: abab bcbc c
The sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines; traditionally it uses the iambic pentameter line, although poets have written sonnets in tetrameter, or in some other way
varied the pure form.
The Italian sonnet uses the following rhyming scheme: abba abba cdd cee (other variations of cde are permissible)
The first eight lines (the octave) set out a statement or premise; the following six lines (the sestet) respond to it.
The English or Shakespearean sonnet is slightly less tight. Its rhyme scheme is as follows: abab cdcd efefgg . The English sonnet divides into three quatrains and a
final couplet.
Poems written in iambic pentameter without end rhyme are called blank verse. The list of poems written in blank verse is practically endless; it includes Hamlet,
Doctor Faustus, Paradise Lost, Hyperion, The Prelude, Tinturn Abbey, The Second Coming, Death of a Hired Man, and many, many others.
Try writing your own poem describing a historical figure in power (can be past or present) and focus on how the power of that figure decayed or weakened. Like Shelley, you can focus on a monument to your chosen historical figure and use Shelley's structure and sonnet rhyme scheme. You can also choose to focus on the visceral ans tangible humanity of that historical figure in or out of power. Another option is to write your poem in any of the other rhyme schemes and patterns Oliver mentions.
If you don’t want to write about a historical figure, you could choose a celebrity, another public figure or even the CEO of a company who hold and exercise a lot of power — for now.
If rhyme and meter are not things that appeals to you, you can write your poem in free verse or as a prose poem. You could also write a short story if you would prefer.
Below is Shelley’s sonnet:
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Join the salon! Share your own work in the comments. We are all friends here and will be supporting and inclusive. More than anything, have fun.
Wrote my undergrad honors thesis on Shelley. Thank you so much for this post.
...tho not a poem
i am reminded of...
the book of daniel...
...& the fall of babylon
..." because he aspired
to become more of a man...
he became⬇️
less of a man"....
...tho not a poem
fits dj-t
...a sextuplet wd work !