[Mary Boren]

Enjoyed this, Matt. A catchy retelling of a tale, and I commend your forthrightness in giving credit where due for it. The ballad meter is so smooth and the gist of the story so easy to follow that I didn't even notice the absence of rhyme until the end, which caught me up short with an unfinished feel. Maybe that's what you intended, but I can't help wishing for either a couple more lines to complete the quatrain before it crawls away or a straight tetrameter couplet to wrap it up neatly. I take it your first-letter caps are a nod to tradition? That's the only other distraction for me, but to each his/her/their own. I readily admit that I don't know if that affects consideration by modern journals, as that's not my motivation.

[Martin Rocek]

Matt,
whatever the source, the telling is lively and draws me in. I'm not sure about the final couplet--it seems so anticlimactic. But no one else commented on that, so it is probably just me.

Thanks for the read!
Martin

[Mary Boren]

Originally Posted by Martin Rocek

/ the final couplet--it seems so anticlimactic. But no one else commented on that /

Um ... what'm I, chopped liver? (jk, I didn't use the same words, so fair enough that you overlooked my comment.)

[Matt Q]

Hi Mary and Martin

Mary, nice to meet you, and welcome to the Sphere!

Many thanks both for your comments.

Useful to know that you both find the close lacking. And interesting also, that no one else seems to (or if they did, they didn't mention it).

I'd hoped the shorter stanza would actually add emphasis to the last line, and add power to the implication (which may or may not have come across) that disabled people are unclean, make it starker.

In the story, after she's tied to the back of wild horse and kicked in pieces, "her body and blood were attacked on the ground by worms and reptiles, and became worms and reptiles moving about till the present time." I had wondered if there was a way to convey this transformation in the poem, since this link will be lost on any reader not familiar with the story -- which, at guess, I'd say would be pretty much every reader! -- and maybe makes the close seems a little arbitrary, but it seemed too complicated/wordy to do this, and seemed to me to reduce the impact the close. I guess if I found a way to do this well, I could expand the last stanza to a full four lines. I'll give it some thought. Still, I don't know that this would make the closing lines any less anti-climactic for you.


Thanks again, both.

Matt