Hi there Plume! Lim here with a short review!
First Impressions
The first thing that strikes me about this poem is about how mind-blowingly symmetrical and neat it is. I just love how the sentiments of longing and avoidance unfold over the course of each stanza. The poem definitely leaves me with a sense of pain but also hope, with the phrase “until autumn”. I find myself wondering if the speaker and the addressee will somehow be together in the end. Another part that stood out to me was in the first stanza “Perseus: he is my shroud” – I thought that allusion was quite sombre.
Structure/ Grammar
Something that is done super well here is the repetition. The ‘rule of three’ in using three stanzas and three myths feels like the perfect amount of space to express the speaker’s feelings. Besides this, the repeated structures also make the poem feel really clever and special.
Medusa I must be, and Perseus:
he is my shroud, a cloud of loneliness
Daphne I must be, and Apollo:
he is my heart, a part of me
Persephone I must be, and Hades:
he is you, we two friends
On my second or third reading I just notice this cool detail where in the third stanza, the speaker finally uses “you” to refer to the mythological figure directly, and for the first time uses “we”. The fact that otherwise the general comma and colon placement and the phrases like “I must be” are kept the same helps to highlight these subtle shifts on a careful read, which makes the poem more nuanced and textured. For me the detail I mentioned sort of marks the development of the speaker’s thoughts from sadness to a kind of more hopeful acknowledgement of their relationship to this person.
Imagery
I felt like while there were some images that connect to the myths (like “pine over pomegranates”), helping to make the allusions more understandable, there’s not much imagery in common among all three stanzas. Maybe this is just my shallow knowledge of Greek mythology showing, but I can’t quite see how one myth ‘leads in’ to the next. I guessed there might be a chain-like connection between them since this poem is classified as narrative, but based on the images alone it’s hard to tell. The main connector for all the stanzas for me is how the speaker uses each myth to express their pining/avoidance of the addressee. Even then, I don’t think Medusa and Perseus were lovers (?) so I might be wrong on that one. As mentioned before, I also thought the first stanza had a surprisingly sombre note, with the use of the Medusa myth implying the speaker might be ‘slain’, but the following stanzas felt a bit less sombre in comparison. I’d be curious to know if that was intentional.
Overall
I like how you’ve managed to use images and descriptions referencing all these different myths and yet maintain a consistent tone. The use of more archaic language like “Persephone I must be” also feels very organic here and also still remains very easily readable by a modern reader. The only suggestion I’d have would be maybe to consider how said images might relate more directly to each other, like if there is a way to put a shared motif between “cloud of loneliness” and “bury and grow over”, or perhaps a way to blend “shroud” with “heart”, though that’s just if those parts are meant to resonate with each other in terms of imagery as well as structure.
Hope some of this helps and feel free to ask for more feedback!
-Lim
Points: 33781
Reviews: 506
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