I wonder if the last line suffers from its missing syllable? My ear wants the first half of the last line to sound differently. I think it's the word 'say.'(?) It feels insufficiently weighty? The last half of the line is fantastic, but I might play around a bit some more with 'what the birds would say.'
The music of it reminds me a little of that Donald Justice sonnet about the Garden of Eden.
Thank you! And thanks for the note. The last line originally had the missing syllable, as an unstressed "and" at the beginning ("and what the birds would say..."), but that bugged me - I was trying overall to get as close to a natural speech cadence as I could manage, and the "and" felt superfluous, just there to tidy up the meter, not doing any work. [edit: I also realized, after I'd already responded, that I read that line as having five beats - the first stress is on "what", not "birds" - but somehow it didn't occur to me that it's more obvious to read it with four!]
Looking at it again, I wonder if the internal rhyme is putting a damper on it - I ended up repeating a lot of "ay" sounds in those last lines (because I like internal rhyme in a sonnet, I think it can make the end rhymes less sing-songy). "Claimed" and "neighbor" and "say" might be too many repetitions in more or less the same spot in the meter; the last line might be more striking if it deviated.
I'll play around with it a bit and see what else bubbles up. I appreciate the food for thought!
Really excellent.
I wonder if the last line suffers from its missing syllable? My ear wants the first half of the last line to sound differently. I think it's the word 'say.'(?) It feels insufficiently weighty? The last half of the line is fantastic, but I might play around a bit some more with 'what the birds would say.'
The music of it reminds me a little of that Donald Justice sonnet about the Garden of Eden.
Thank you! And thanks for the note. The last line originally had the missing syllable, as an unstressed "and" at the beginning ("and what the birds would say..."), but that bugged me - I was trying overall to get as close to a natural speech cadence as I could manage, and the "and" felt superfluous, just there to tidy up the meter, not doing any work. [edit: I also realized, after I'd already responded, that I read that line as having five beats - the first stress is on "what", not "birds" - but somehow it didn't occur to me that it's more obvious to read it with four!]
Looking at it again, I wonder if the internal rhyme is putting a damper on it - I ended up repeating a lot of "ay" sounds in those last lines (because I like internal rhyme in a sonnet, I think it can make the end rhymes less sing-songy). "Claimed" and "neighbor" and "say" might be too many repetitions in more or less the same spot in the meter; the last line might be more striking if it deviated.
I'll play around with it a bit and see what else bubbles up. I appreciate the food for thought!
I look forward to reading it!
Btw this is both the best rhyming dictionary and the best thesaurus I know: https://www.rhymezone.com/