- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Penelope's Story
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Penelope sits at her loom
weaving and unweaving
fearing the union of her threads
will hold her from her true aim.
What is perfect is too far off,
what will do is all too close
and there is no mast around her
to use ‘gainst the siren host.
Pleasing suitors leer about her
cunning crass and craven friends
ingratiators waiting, sneer
at the thought of truer ends.
Between the empty void too little
and the monster’s maw too much
cunning words must carefully sail
to escape from failure’s clutch.
No hero from afar can come
to slay the false and show the true,
but Pallas will surely help her
breathe beauty’s breath to something new.
- COMMENTS
greenmountaineeralmost 13 years agoWell 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.
simply__mealmost 13 years agothis 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.
zack_constantinealmost 13 years agoI 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.
bulltlralmost 13 years agoVery nice read.... My favorite lines
cunning words must carefully sail
to escape from failure’s clutch.
