Hello, w0lfbane

What I liked

I liked the flow of your sonnet and the reversal you achieved in your final couplet. Nicely done.

What might need work

The Spenserian Sonnet was a development from his Spenserian Stanzas and so used the same basic metre , ie. iambic pentametre.

http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm

Your poem abandons this meter. If you want to make your poem a true Spenserian sonnet then you need to adjust that. Take your opening stanza as an example.

I opened the book, its pages were blank.
On the desk beside the inkwell.
The quill still in its tank.
I flipped through and its pages fell.

I scan this as:

. - / . . - / . - / . . -
- . - / . - / . - .
. - / . - / . -
. - / - . / . - / . -

Where . Is an unstressed and - is a stressed syllable. However, in iambic pentameter, each line should be five beats long, with each beat containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Sometimes a line may begin with a trochaic foot (ie. the stresses reversed) but there will always be five feet, even when there's a feminine end, such as in the famous line "To be / or not / to be / that is / the question.

So, each line shoul scan as . - / . - / . - / . - / . -

If your opening quatrain were written in iambic pentameter, it might look something like:

I opened up the book but found it blank
Upon the desk beside my pot of ink.
Although the quill stood ready in its tank,
Yet nothing came to mind that I could think.

Try reading my version aloud and slowly; hopefully you'll hear the stresses.

Iambic pentameter sounds like "and one, and two, and three, and four, and five." Try reading that aloud and you'll hear it, I suspect.

There's a website where you can look up the number of syllable in a word and its stress patterns which might help you to write iambic feet.

https://www.howmanysyllables.com

I hope this helps.

Since you enjoy writing poetry, consider joining: "The Poet's Place "  if you're not already a member.

Thank you for sharing!

Best wishes,

Bob



My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .