Blog Response (Chiaroscuro)

Blog Response (Chiaroscuro)

Brandon Lazovic

                So for my blog response this week instead of writing another response to an assignment in class (because I don’t have any other assignments to write on) I’m going to elaborate on one of the poems that I wrote this week, Chiaroscuro. It’s technically my thirteen lines assignment (when you take an object and write thirteen different ideas about it). Originally I thought about writing about emotions and the different ones that people feel, but I ended up writing about the Seven Deadly Sins. I’m not really sure why, but I just had a spark to write about them and ended up doing it. To fit the assignment I ended up accompanying them with the Seven Holy Virtues in order to make it fourteen lines instead of thirteen (close enough). In a sense I stuck to the emotion format, but tweeked it to make it more specific.

                Throughout the poem I write one sin and one virtue side by side to what I thought would match up the best (the opposite ends of the spectrum to fit each other). As I got down the list it got kind of hard to match them accordingly since some of the virtues didn’t quite match up correctly with the leftover sins, or any of the sins in general. I also wrote the poem in a ‘Ye old tyme’ format, to the best of my ability. I’ve always enjoyed the way older poems from previous centuries are written compared to modern times and wanted to emulate that in my writing this time, or at least try to incorporate certain aspects of it into my style of writing. Each quatrain is written in a ABAB format similar to a sonnet, along with the 10 syllables per line, except the last line I changed it to a 12 syllable sentence instead to lengthen up the conclusion for the sin or virtue.

                The rest of the poem is written kind of cryptically and vaguely, enough so that the reader can still have a general idea of what it’s about on first glance but the sentences need to be elaborated on in order to fully understand them (similar to that ‘ye old tyme’ style). The only other note worthy thing about my poem would have to be the title, Chiaroscuro, which in Italian means “light and dark.” It’s generally used in artistic contrast and style, but I thought it was the perfect title for my poem considering the poem bounces back and forth between sin and virtue, the worst aspects in people compared to the most highly regarded aspects in human nature. Some of the content of the poem has a few allusions, just enough to make the reader think a little in the context they’re used in without going over the top and overfilling the poem with them. In regards to what the poem’s content is it basically goes into detail about the sins and virtues. Again, it’s written cryptically to make the reader think about what the underlying meaning is, but in the end it’s all about the sin or virtue listed. But that’s all I have to really say without being too specific or picking apart the content of the poem, so read it and enjoy!