Kaveh and the Serpent King

Visual Poetry by Individualist

I wrote this poem after the Greens were protesting in Iran when the government showed its true tyrannical colors when they denied Mousavi the office to which it is clear he was legitimately elected. As our media at the time found other distractions away from this story we heard less from our President on the matter and I was saddened. I really felt that Obama should have recognized Mousavi as the elected President of Iran despite the President's rhetoric that America was doing the best for the movement by ignoring the issue. The emotions in me were strong to address the issue. I channeled the feelings I had from watching the death of Neda Soltan on You Tube into writing this poem. Given Ahmadinejad’s new speech where he reveals that he is a 911 Truther I felt I would put this poem on this blog to once again remind people that this man is not the elected President of Iran but rather the puppet put in power by the mullahs that control the country in a dictatorial oligarchy. I also think that it is fitting that a totalitarian like him would denounce free market capitalism.

The story of Kaveh the Blacksmith is maybe the most popular Iranian tale and the allusions in the poetry, such as they are refer to it. This link gives a version of the story.

KAVEH the Blacksmith

I regret to there is little I can do to help the  people of Iran that this effort insufficient as it is appears to be one the few things I am capable of helping with the cause.  The Story of Kaveh the Blacksmith who defeats Zohak the Serpent King summarized from The Epic of Shahnameh Ferdowsi.  Somehow I find similarities between Ahmadinejad who rules as a puppet for the Iranian Theocracy and Zohak who is a puppet of Ahriman the Evil One.  In real life however Kaveh the Blacksmith is in the hearts of the young people of Iran.  God help them to stay the course.

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FREEDOM

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:

I have taken my time to study Iambic Pentameter and this poem is my first attempt at using this medium. Iambic Pentameter is a type of poem that defines the meter in which it is written. The word iambic refers to the type of feet used in the poem. The foot refers to the meter used in the poem. In Latin or Greek the foot is measured by the length of the syllables. In an iambic foot this is a short syllable followed b y a long one. When using this form in English the length of the syllable is replaced by the stress one places on them when reciting the poem or in the case of an iambic foot “da DUM”, unstressed and stressed. The pentameter refers to the five feet that is used in the poem. Classical Greek poetry followed the rule of five, “da-Dum da-Dum da-Dum da-Dum da-Dum“. This is the masculine format. I will not get into the feminine or more complicated methods of iambic pentameter most notably used by Shakespeare.

In researching the poetry I read several of the Shakespearian Sonnets and decided to mirror this one on the 14 lines of the Sonnet. Since the poems as written are not broken into Stanzas I broke the lines arbitrarily into the pictures as 4-3-3-4 and developed an alternating rhyming scheme where the 7th and 8th stanzas rhymed and then continued alternating. This was not the rule Shakespeare seemed to use in the Sonnets. Instead he alternated lines and the last two lines of the Sonnet (13 & 14) repeated.

I will note that I found this structure to be very difficult to write. The poems required the lines to meet a certain number of syllables and one had to try to write them in a way that repeating the meter was not awkward in addition to the normal difficulty of finding ways to make the statements rhyme and still have meaning. I have a greater respect for the poetic capabilities of Shakespeare as a result of this exercise. Actually I am misspeaking here. Of course one has to have respect for the talents of the Bardl, that cannot be in dispute. What I should say is I have a greater appreciation for the skills that were required for Shakespeare to write his poetry in this medium.

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