A ray of sunshine is my only light,
Though it's called "The Moon" at night,
The sun is a fireball burning bright.
The sun is a source of light,
A natural one at that,
It's a rising sensation that can give you fright,
It's a massive star,
So big and fat.
3 comments:
Hi PRETTYFACE,
Thank- you for your post, it was really good to read your work for the first time.
I enjoyed reading your poem 'The Sun' and the way you have built up strong rhymes with 'light' and 'night', 'bright' and 'light' and 'that' and 'fat' and how each of your lines, bar one, end in a 't' sound; creating a strong rhythm throughout the poem.
I liked your line 'Though it is called "the moon" at night' as I wouldn't have thought to compare the sun and the moon in this poem, even though as you have rightly pointed out the moon is the sun's double as it shares the sun's light.
Your first line also interested me. I liked the way it was written in first person- from a speaker's point of view: 'A ray of sunshine is my only light.' I wondered where the speaker might be that only the sun's 'natural' rays gave them light. I imagined they could be living outdoors in a forest or jungle somewhere.
Your poem's rhymes are very strong, but to create a mix of different interesting sounds you could try having a different rhyme for the 2nd and 4th line than from the 1st and 3rd line. For instance, your 1st line ends in an 'ight' sound as does your third line with 'bright', so you could pick a different rhyming sound for the 2nd and 4th line to vary your rhymes instead of having the 'ight' sound again.
My favourite line and metaphor is 'The sun is a fireball burning bright' as it conjures up a brilliant fiery orange image of the sun in my mind. This is a strong example of a metaphor (when you describe something by saying it IS something else), as the sun is not really a fireball. But the sun is 'a massive star' and a 'source of light' so these are not metaphors, yet are still ways of describing the sun and fit well into your poem. If you wanted to put more metaphors into your poem try thinking of objects that perhaps remind you of the sun in some way and then use these to create metaphors. For example you could say:
'The sun is a a crust of bread dipped in yolk.'
or 'The sun is an orange dropped from a bowl'
or 'The sun is a bonfire licking the sky'
These are all metaphors as they are describing the sun by saying it is another object.(I'm sure you could write much better, but you get the idea!)
I really enjoyed reading your poem and look forward to reading your next post.
Shadi
Thanks for your advice Shadi =]
I am happy to have you as my moderator and I will take as much of your advice on board as I can x
Shadi has given so much good advice, there is not much left for me to say - but I thought you would benefit from another viewpoint too, just like from Task 2 onwards you will also be moderated by some of our Secondary students.
I agree with everything Shadi has said - about rhyme, rhythm and also metaphor. Lots of good advice to take on board there.
However, I also think that, as with all wordvoodoo tasks, it is so important that you try as hard as you possibly can to stick to the rules I set for each task. Sometimes this might seem annoying - especially since 'creative writing' is supposed to be about being free and imaginative - but in my experience some of the best work often comes out of wrestling with tight constraints to produce something both creative and disciplined. Do you know what I mean?
Therefore, imagine what you would have done if you had stuck to exactly the same structure (and rhyme) as Valerie Bloom's poem, whilst also ensuring your metaphors and language were totally unique and original. That is where the real challenge lies! :) Why not have another look at her poem, and also at some of the other pupils' attempts, and see how you could approached it in different ways to your own?
Like Shadi, I think there is also a lot of fun to be had when experimenting with metaphors - and I love the original examples she has given you. What ones could you come up with of your own too?
You clearly have loads of potential, and a real gift for language - and I look forward to following how you use this to wrestle with the demands of the tasks in future. Well done on your first post!
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