Young Writers Society

Ah! You are really a fantastic poet erilea, I always always always enjoy seeing another one of your poems, and can totally imagine you creating a little portfolio of Greek mythology poems.

So let's take a look at this one!

I think I love most the little chorus throughout the poem

"medusa looks in the mirror and hates what she /sees/wants/feels/" it's a little twist on the usual image of looking in a mirror and hating what you see, so it's relateable honestly, but also makes the poem build with each progression to a sort of crescendo where we've looked at how she sees, what she's done and then finally just her emotions. It's really lovely, and gives the poem a firm continuity in narrative progression too.

I also appreciate that you didn't throw in every imagery piece that could possibly relate to medusa, but stuck to a few key images that are carried throughout the poem - stones, breaths, memory, sight. This keeps the poem really tight, and creates a fuller picture instead of a bunch of loose threads. I wonder if you could pick one particular person/family to dig deeper into so it wasn't quite as general, and moved towards specificity. You do get to perseus at the end, but towards the beginning the poem feels a bit general.

Your formatting, capitalization, punctuation all seemed consistent, so I didn't really take issue with any of that. Normally I'd complain about uneven lines, but I actually thought this poem flowed fairly well even with the uneven lines, maybe because it wasn't broken up into stanzas, and was short enough to read all in one go.

A few critiques:

in this line:

"she lives in fear, each day a question,

a plea to gods who won't forgive her."

"she stays alive, makes herself open her eyes every morning,

look at the statues,

and remember."

Hey erilea! Swinging by for a review today

Quick disclaimer: I'm not a poetry reviewer normally. If this reflects in my review, I apologise.


Okay, let's get into it, shall we? First of all, this immediately caught my attention, because I've never gotten over my love of Greek Myths.

I've seen some discussion about Medusa's legend and I think it's fascinating- and terribly tragic. She was abused for being beautiful, and then killed for being a monster. She really couldn't win here. So, again, obviously I am very hyped about this and got really excited when I saw your summary as being "Medusa is misunderstood."

she stays alive, makes herself open her eyes every morning,

look at the statues,

and remember.

Hey!

May I just say, that this is the first of your works I have read, but looking at the related section I am excited to read more.

Alright, so I have always felt bad for Medusa as well, and in this story I think you capture well what she is seeing/wanting/feeling. I also really like the format of this poem, and how you return to the line "Medusa looks in the mirror and hates what she...". It makes it really interesting to read.

I didn't notice anything to improve on except that there are no capitols, which might be on purpose, but usually there is at least one capitol for the very first word of the story.

I also really liked the ending of this story. It's final, but leaves room for the imagination, and encompasses the real story of Medusa well.
-Gnomish