[Elise Hempel]

You're right about fiction. But why is "allergy" awkward enough to warrant a change?

[Eileen Cleary]

The All the world's a stage feel of this sonnet didn't feel fresh or new to me. I do like the idea of the stage becoming smaller and more confined as the speaker is confined to bed. I like the cotton cave, hoisting the sheet sails and sailing the carpet blue. I feel the specializing in soliloquy and dwindling cast is too contrived.

The fairy dust set off my allergy, seems not to make sense since it is unlikely that the fairy dust would set off an allergy (since it didn't bother the N. before) and more likely that the fairy dust would be lost, blown away or couldn't be seen by aging eyes.

the sail became a shroud is more poignant, but is a person shrouded before he/she dies? It could be a shroud for childhood or wellness, though.
I think the ending could be stronger. Have more music in it.

[ross hamilton hill]

I thought it terrific, the sexual connotation of 'spears' reminded me of the little spears the Zulu maidens carry in the move 'Zulu'. I liked the progression through the ages, also the compression of thought and well,.. everything, except perhaps the title, 'bed' seems to belittle the scope of the poem.

[Ann Drysdale]

It's a progress - bed as punishment, subverted by play, bed as consummation, sweetened by lust, bed as last resort...

All situations previously explored, of course, but I looked for new ways of saying and found some.

[E. Shaun Russell]

I'm with Eileen. I feel I have read this before, maybe half a dozen times. Reminiscing about the make-believe of youth and tying it into the twilight years. That's not to say this poem doesn't handle it very well -- it does -- but it's not quite fresh enough for me to be captured by it.

There's also some padding in here, with the "would" in L7 the most egregious example. I'm also lukewarm about the bracketed bit in L5-6. It feels extraneous to me.

I agree with Orwn's comment that "allergy" and "soliloquy" might be better pluralized.

Overall, I think this is well-handled, and it's probably my number three at this point, but I'm left wanting a little bit more that I haven't seen before.

[Michael Cantor]

It's an interesting concept - the DG appears to have a predilection for that - but the poem isn't as good as the concept. The use of names to make a rhyme bothers me - I prefer to banish Maeve to limericks - and the extras and their spears are cornball. The sestet is good, but on second reading I could do with a few less metaphors.

[Wells Burgess]

I liked this sonnet very much. The progression and tone of it. The sestet has a particular poignancy and yet a discipline in it, and it shows how form can contain feeling. By that I mean the poem can proceed through comedy into the darkly tragic place of the last two lines, but the form and the voice of the poet contain this ending, which calls back to the beginning, so that neither poet or reader is lost in that ending. I guess the voice is the mixture of irony that maintains, through the trope of the stage, a detachment from the starkness of the end. It's really a marvelously accomplished work. Wells Burgess

[Catherine Chandler]

I echo Michael Cantor's comments.

[Christine Whittemore]

I like this the best so far but still have reservations, mostly those already mentioned by others.

Re the soliloquy line, I find it metrically awkward, and would if it were plural too--it's something about the "specialize."

I did like the opening, the cotton cave (though agree the specific naming of Maeve seems gratuitous) and the children playing, the sail, the carpet blue cleverly echoing "ocean blue" and the whole world of children's make-believe...The opening pulled me in.

I felt the Shakespeare section far less successful.

The sestet does have poignancy though I don't like "fairy dust" and agree with whoever said "became a shroud" doesn't quite work, as the speaker isn't dead yet...but I do like the idea, the transformation of the sheet from sail to shroud...

"dwindling cast" and the whole concept of dress-rehearsal for the final illness are perhaps a little shop-worn...

I think the poem with just a few tweaks could be more original and much stronger. I like the continuity of the bed throughout--unity of place?--the containment of a whole life in the bed seems to fit the sonnet form.

[Robert Meyer]

Another thing I find fascinating in this poem is the fact that the "first love" reads her Richard III. With all the stuff Shakespeare wrote about love, he picks that thing; basically saying, "Yeah, I murdered your husband, but he fits more in heaven than on earth, I just helped him to get there quicker; and anyway, I did it all for your love." That's pretty sick, and it bodes bad for their relationship that he (the first love of N) would pick R3 to symbolize his love for her. R3 didn't love anyone but himself and his quest for power, Lady Anne was just a stepping stone he used to make himself seem more right for the job of being king.