Pauline

Let me tell you about the most tragic love story that has ever been known.

It's about a man who had a lover and her name was Pauline Jones.

It happened thirty-five years in the past.

But sadly, it was destined not to last.

She was beautiful with her hourglass figure and red hair.

But when she was taken from him, it was sad and unfair.

She had an ex-lover and he was jealous and mean.

He was furious and bitter because he lost Pauline.

Her ex-lover decided to visit her and she rejected him one last time.

He became enraged and he's rotting in prison for his horrible crime.

When she rejected her ex-lover, he decided that she shouldn't live anymore.

When Pauline's new lover came home, he found her lying dead on the floor.

When he saw what had been done,

He decided to end it all with his gun.

He knew that he could not be happy without having Pauline by his side.

He bought an engagement ring and was going to ask her to be his bride.

She treated him like a king and he treated her like she was a queen.

He ended his life because life would've been worthless without Pauline.

Reviews

[JayG]

The thing to remember is that that placing a rhyme on the end of a series of declarative sentences doesn't make it a poem. The structure has to be poetic, with attention paid to prosody and structure, so the words are pronounced, as Shakespeare put it, "trippingly" on the tongue." To accomplish that, he number of feet per line, relating to other lines, matters greatly.

Here's the deal: Rhyming is the accent, not the purpose. Prosody adds a cadence to the word-flow, and because it has relevance to both structured and unstructured poetry, is of more importance than rhyme. Poetry has been under development of thousands of years. So some time spent acquiring that knowledge makes it a lot easier, and is well worth the effort. For starters, take a look at the Amazon excerpt for Stephen Fry's, The Ode Less Traveled. It's an eye-opener I suggest to both poets and those writing fiction, for what he has to say about the flow of language.

As an aside... You claim that 18 lines that mention a man who loses the women he wanted to marry, and commits suicide as a result, is the top love-tragedy of all time? Seriously? More tragic than Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Brokeback Mountain or Titanic?

Naaa.