All Comments on 'Penelope's Story'

Nice tricks with the alliteration. Very nice.

Very nice read.... My favorite lines

cunning words must carefully sail

to escape from failure’s clutch.

I find this kind of a fascinating poem. It has, for example, a kind of weirdly enchanting structure: rhymed ABCB in stanzas 2-5 (though, I suppose stanza 3 could be considered to be ABAB), but stanza 1 seems wholly unstructured. Similarly, the metrical regualrity seems to peak in stanza 3 and get less regular the farther away from the center (i.e., stanzas 1 and 5 seem less regular than stanzas 2 and 4 which seem less regular than stanza 3).

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this.

That "'gainst" at the end of stanza two seems forced and unnecessary (at least to me).

The theme of the poem is also interesting. I would think many contemporary soldiers' wives would have similar problems. Perhaps that is not the author's intent.

Did I say I like this poem? I did, immensely.

this is a smooth read with carefully crafted word play. I've read it several times letting the sounds play off one another. Not only did you pull off the word play, you told a story. It's good.

Well written. I always need a little help from Wikipedia when it comes to Greek classics, but it was worth it.

Not sure why you contracted "against.". I think the iambic tetrameter would have sounded just fine.

Unrelated to meter or rhyme, I did like first stanza In particular. I was always given the impression that Penelope was sorta asexual and her suitors were bores; that probably had more to do with having been taught by nuns. It's nice to know she was tempted.

I wonder how necessary S 4 was. I already acknowledged my limited understanding of the Greek Classics, so maybe I'm missing something, but the stanza didn't add anything to the effectiveness of the poem for me.

bars no boundaries. TK U MLJ LV NV