From: jww@evolving.com (John W. Woolley)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Mortal
Date: 23 Dec 92 19:20:06 GMT
Organization: Evolving Systems, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

First, my apologies if this appears to you as a repost.  I think my
newsposter fouled it up the first few times (!), and anyway Kateri
says she didn't see it.  Criticisms of my criticism welcome.

Read the poem again, folks:

moh2@quads.uchicago.edu (Kateri/Mary Anne) writes:
: Mortal
: (Another Tale of True Thomas)
: 
: In my British cousin's attic, in her creaking wooden house,
: A chest that held a tapestry, dulled with dust and age.
: And near it lay torn pages, edges nibbled by a mouse,
: We sat and read together, grimy thumbprints on each page.
: 
: The pages told a story, scribbled in a shaking hand,
: Of a human man named Thomas, and a lady all in green,
: How he met her at a crossroads, and followed to her land.
: The pages told the story of the tapestry we'd seen.
: 
: He wore swirling rags of color and a harper's cape of blue.
: His hand was in the lady's, harp of silver at his side;
: But a curse was laid upon him; every word he spoke was true--
: His reward for kisses stolen; curse a harper could not hide.
: 
: Mortal weaving can't do justice to the beauty of the fey,
: Her glory rivaled beauty of sunset or sunrise,
: But we held hands and shivered on that cold December day,
: For the weaver had caught perfectly the terror in his eyes.

Wow, really good ending.  I shivered, too.  Good poem!

You do good stuff with assonance and alliteration, especially in the
first stanza -- "dulled with dust".  "age"/"pages"/"edges" is fine.

Might I suggest (humbly, hesitatingly) that you leave out the word
"that" in line 2 (making the sentence gramatically complete, and
adding some rhythmic irregularity) and the word "human" in line 6
(unless it's for some reason important to you).  And maybe "lay" in
line 3.

There are two half-lines that strike me as clumsy, the second halves
of lines 4 and 7, but I don't know what to do about them.  Line 8
repeats line 5 too closely, I think.  Maybe "Their story was the story ..."

The third stanza needs some rhythmic variation.  Are you sure about
"harp of silver"?  Wouldn't it be awfully heavy?  And the tone --
does anyone make metal harps?  Maybe you mean silver inlay.

"Can't do justice to the beauty" is, maybe, a trifle cliche-ish.
Try something like "Mortal weaving couldn't catch the wild beauty of
the fey"?  And there's maybe a confusion of thought here -- lines 13
and 14 seem to contradict each other.  If the tapestry couldn't
express her beauty's glory, why do you follow with a comment on her
beauty that seems to be a description of the tapestry?  I think you
need something more like:
    Mortal weaving couldn't catch the wild beauty of the fey,
    Couldn't blaze like the setting sun or dazzle like its rise.

Kateri, pray don't abandon this one.  It's worth extra work.
-- 
Fr. John Woolley (jww@evolving.com); vastly enthusiastic about Augustine,
Austen, babies, Bach, backgammon, baseball, beer, the Bible, Botticelli, Burke,
Chesterton, Dante, Dixieland, hardboiled, Hitchcock, Dr Johnson, Latin, Mozart,
Shakespeare/de Vere, St Teresa, Tolkien, Trollope, Fats Waller, and Washington
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems