Her Deadly Beauty
 

For context, this poem is part of a speech from an ongoing creative writing project I am working on set in a fantasy world. As a result, it uses much archaism and outdated writing formats to obtain a sense of antiquity. If you don't like that, well that's just how my setting works.

V2
… for in her lives
A panoply of whispers, charms, and smiles
More fierce than feminine, as whetted steel
In wanton war, she wields her beauty’s hilt.
Her wits out-legion all th’ embattled hosts
That soldiers trade their arms to beg for alms;
Or, like th’ envenomed dart, her burning kiss
Is drawn with dalliance upon her lips,
A mortal arrow fletched with groans and sighs
That from her scarlet bow is swiftly loosed.
Her velvet arms, those slender instruments,
Which fan perdition’s flame with ecstasy,
Claiming usury’s interest for her loan
Of pleasures brief, which she demands in pain
With ev’ry idle bliss repaid to her
Times three, with jagged woes and barbed regrets.

V1
… for in her lives
A panoply of whispers, charms, and smiles
More fierce than feminine, as whetted steel
In wanton war, she wields her beauty’s hilt;
Her wits out-legion such a force of arms,
That fortune’s gallant soldier turns to alms;
Or, like th’ envenomed dart, her burning kiss
Is drawn with dalliance upon her lips,
A mortal arrow fletched with groans and sighs,
That from her scarlet bow is swiftly loosed;
Her velvet arms, those slender instruments,
That fan perdition’s flame with ecstasy,
Make pain with paradise a mutual peer;
For th’ usury of pleasure shall be pain,
Where ev’ry idle bliss is paid to her
In thrice, with jagged woes and barbed regrets.

Hi, N.—

Your meter is flawless, and I like the alliteration. You do a nice job of presenting an extended comparison of the woman’s beauty to an arsenal of deadly weapons. I especially like the image of her kiss being an arrow fired from the bow of her mouth.

I had a few questions:

1. I don’t understand in line 6 how the soldier turns to “alms” (a charitable gift).

2. The word “drawn” in line 8 is ambiguous. I’m pretty sure that you mean it in the sense of “pulling back a bowstring,” and the image of a kiss turning her lips into a taut bowstring is clever, but it could also mean “painted or sketched on,” suggesting the insincerity of her kiss. Did you intend this?

3. In line 13 you personify “pain” as a peer of “paradise.” In the next line you change the image and make pain the exorbitant interest that the woman charges for the loan of pleasure. This requires a bit too much nimbleness on the reader’s part. Could you, perhaps, choose one of these images (I suggest the second one) and develop it over the last four lines?

Here’s an example:

Claiming usurious interest for her loan
Of fleeting pleasures, which she demands in pain
With ev’ry idle bliss paid back to her
Three times, with jagged woes and barbed regrets.

This eliminates the repetition of the word “pain” in adjacent lines, gets rid of the mixed metaphor, and clarifies the awkward expression “in thrice.”

Nice work!
Glenn

Thank you so much!

1. The idea was her beauty as a weapon is enough to put a soldier out of work, so he'll be left begging for alms.

2. I did not, I am not an archer myself, so I merely used the terms to the best of my knowledge. I don't know if the ambiguity is a windfall or not, but if there's another word for drawn here, I'm not sure what it is.

3. The idea was that pain is made a peer of paradise, and is not naturally. But I do see the confusion, and while I love your idea, I'm struggling to get it to conform to the exact meter I'm using.

Greetings N!

I have a love of archaisms myself and also an appreciation for the fantastical. This appears to be a character sketch, and I'm imagining it as an introduction to a more fully fleshed character with a name and a story arc. I think it would be easier to absorb it in the larger context, but since it is divorced from that here, I'm just processing it as a standalone poem.

My favorite bit is the loosing of a burning kiss from the bow of her lips. The extended metaphor there feels quite rich. Like Glenn, I appreciate the regularity of your meter and the bristling of the many different weapons you've drawn for her.

However, my overall impression is that I'm struggling with the syntax and just making sense here. The unbroken nesting of clause after clause is quite exhausting for me to read. For me, personally, I would like this broken into some distinct sentences each ended with periods. I realize that the semi-colons essentially function to do that, but I'd prefer periods. A nice period just gives the brain a place to rest for a second. But I may just be a lazy reader or not understand what you're doing here.

I also am just confused in places:

I struggled to imagine a panoply of fierce "whispers, charms, and smiles". How does one charm fiercely?

I'm not sure about wielding a hilt. Why not wielding her beauty's "blade"?

I can't parse "Her wits out-legion such a force of arms,/ That fortune’s gallant soldier turns to alms;"

I take it to mean she's very witty. But I'm not sure who "fortune's gallant soldier" could be. Who is fortune and why does fortune have a soldier (gallant or otherwise)? Why does her being witty make him a beggar? Is he so gallant that he gives her all his money? Perhaps.

I guess I think maybe this got carried away with clever images and strong meter and lost a little bit of a grip on meaning.

1. I can understand the conflict of images, and it does read like an oxymoron. The idea was she has these feminine tools at her disposal but wields them like weapons.

2. I originally had that, but I felt that was overdoing the alliteration.

3. I'm personifying fortune here, the idea is that she can rival an entire legion and therefore soldiers are going to be left begging for alms when she puts them out of work.

I really do love this last suggestion, but the meter is jilted and I cannot make it work no matter what I try.

Clearly Glenn's and Paula's enthusiasm demonstrates that there is an audience for this sort of thing, but it just makes me think, "Gadzooks."

Nay, verily, 'tis not just the archaism, but the misogyny against the sexy, nefarious woman that doth make this trope not my demitasse of tisane. (This sort of thing reminds me of the poetry that a middle-aged stalker used to write for me when I was eighteen, accusing me of cruelty for not appreciating his tediously obsessive appreciation of my physical charms. Ugh. I must admit that after several weeks of having to put up with his wounded poetry slipped under my door every few days, the thought of his dropping dead did, indeed, start to have some appeal.)

If you're using archaism, you should comply with the old rules of restrictive clauses (introduced with "that") and nonrestrictive clauses (introduced with "which"). No comma should be used to set off a restrictive clause from the rest of the sentence, so you should delete the commas before the "that"s in Line 10 and Line 12. See https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_w..._vs_which.html

Okay, that was a bit much. But I should stress that this isn't me writing my opinions, this is a poem from a narrative within a story, not my description and opinion of a character. This is a character voicing their opinion of another character.

Oh, yes, I saw your preface, and I understand that this passage is the argument of a character who is participating in a long, long tradition of la belle dame sans merci, which continues today in various forms, including gangsta rap's "Jezebel" and "Sapphire" stereotypes of sexually aggressive, emasculating women.

But another word for long, long traditions is "clichés."

Perhaps, in the context of your fantasy story, the woman is literally a witch, siren, fairy, etc. But the portrayal is still in conversation with a range of historical and contemporary portrayals of male helplessness before feminine power and wiles, that goes back to portrayals of Adam as just an innocent bystander in the Garden of Eden, unfairly punished for a sin that Eve committed and then implicated Adam in.

The violence of the weaponry images in your character's version brings the trope to a new level, but it's up to the individual reader to decide if that newness makes this old trope new enough to suit their taste. For me, the archaism just adds to my "Oh, this tired old trope again" reaction.

Other readers' reactions will vary, of course, and that's perfectly fine. I fully expect to be in the minority here. But I thought it might be useful to you to know that at least one reader is more than a bit tired of the heterosexual male victimhood narrative, which justifies violence against women as self-defense. And that tiredness makes me less inclined than usual to give the poem a fair hearing on its own merits.

Is the poem about a sexbon? It surely cannot be about a human, and certainly cannot be spoken by a human. Maybe it is spoken by an algorithm? Something with the capacity to collage the most misogynistic passages of Elizabethan songs together?

Are you insinuating I didn't write this, but an AI made it instead?

Hello N. Matheson.

Is this woman hating? I imagine you are civil to women in your life., which is the most important thing. Well, the verse exists within the self-enclosed world of insults/disparagement/back-handed-praise, which is generally not the most positive place in the whole wide world. I myself did not know what to comment about this, because I don't how it could be improved much. After all, it is not imitation that sounds immediately and distinctly off, but I have not immersed myself in that time period of verse, so I am not exactly expert. It is better imitation than what I am used to hearing where people are just making obvious mistakes all over the place and creating a mish-mash sound that does not sit easily in any time period but only in the imagination of the author.

Hopefully, I will have something more useful to say on your other poems.

Addendum: In the current political climate, things like woman disparaging a man would actually be okay, and not labelled misandry.

The current political climate is one of vehement disagreement, so I have no doubt there would be plenty of #NotAllMen responses if the shoe were on the other foot.

And I would also expect to hear opinions along the lines of "Hey, Snowflake, don't be so sensitive, this is the perspective of a character, not the poet, would you give Robert Browning a hard time for his 'offensive' dramatic monologues?" Which complaint could also be applied to my own criticisms of the narrator's attitude, although I hope it's clear that my quibble isn't with the attitude per se, but with whether it's been made new enough in this poem to feel like a fresh variation on an old theme. In my opinion, at least, the archaisms don't help in that regard.

But you did not give me any critiques beyond the which and that. You simply derided it for existing and conflated the speaker's views with my own.

That's not how I read Julie's comments at all. She said "my quibble isn't with the attitude per se, but with whether it's been made new enough in this poem to feel like a fresh variation on an old theme. In my opinion, at least, the archaisms don't help in that regard."

So the criticism, with which I agree, is that the choice to use archaism in combination with an old, familiar theme keeps the poem from seeming fresh and new. Do you only want granular comments, like the that/which issue, but feel that reacting to the overall tone and voice is somehow unfair or wrong?

I think poets should write in their own language. There's something that is fundamentally false and untrue and awkward about rejecting your own language and adopting one that you and your readers never learned to speak and have no fluency in whatsoever. I inevitably get the feeling that the poet lacks the confidence and craft to use modern language effectively in a poem, and uses archaism as a talisman to ward off other types of criticism. But it seems obvious to me that when you try to write a poem with language as spoken hundreds of years ago, you are consciously putting a distance between you and the reader and are providing no real motivation for the reader to traverse that distance or even meet you half way.

That's a fundamental disagreement I have. It's difficult for me to take modern poetry seriously on account of how it sounds. Modern English is, in my view, anathema to poetry. It just doesn't work well for the medium. It comes off as vulgar, coarse, and a confused heap of syllables that have as much structure to them as a pile of gravel.

It is hard to critique something like this, N. Because you are writing something that seems to be a sincere imitation of 16th century verse, with no sense of ironic commentary or comic anachronism, the only success criteria is 'does it sounds like it was written by someone who has been dead for 500 years?' In which case, the answer is probably yes. I'm no expert but I've read worse pastiches. But to what purpose? It makes me wonder about your fantasy world. Is it a sort of alternative universe Elizabethan England? Does everyone speak like this?

Edit : we cross-posted and I just read your above response. Well, I have so many disagreements and questions but I'll stick to one. What do you class as "modern"? What's your cut off point?

There is a reason I do not have my full name listed. I would prefer you not use my given name.

Edit: Thank you.

Fair enough. I edited my post.

Weirdly, I just guessed your name. I think I was confusing you with another newish member.

Anyway...

The entire project was a mix of verse and prose, with certain sections in blank verse like old drama. Broadly, yes, this is a fantasy world and people more or less talk like this. There were many other writing styles I used but those are beyond the scope of the forum.

N., like Mark, I'm curious to hear where your chronological cutoff is for Modern English usage in formal poetry. By and large, do you find Robert Frost's work to be vulgar, coarse, and unstructured? W. H. Auden's?* Philip Larkin's? Richard Wilbur's? Les Murray's? A.E. Stallings's? Would you say that their use of contemporary English in formal poetry "just doesn't work well for the medium"? Because most other readers find their work masterful.

I suspect that what you really mean is that when you try to write poetry in Modern English yourself, you find it frustratingly hard. But, well, writing good poetry of any sort is frustratingly hard. Welcome to the club.

Giving yourself permission to invert normal sentence structure, with the excuse that it's intended to evoke another era, is one way to try to make it easier. But cheats like pretending to be someone who talks funny to modern ears are not going to save a poem that doesn't have something interesting to say, or interesting ways to say it. (I did think that your weaponry imagery was interesting, and I enjoyed a lot of your alliteration; but these things, although skillful, were not enough to make this topic new for me.)

You have a perfect right to flatly reject the modern English idiom in which most of us are writing at Eratosphere, if that's not your style. But if so, you probably won't receive writing advice here that is useful for the effects you want to achieve.

You will undoubtedly receive criticism more in harmony with your own ars poetica in an online poetry community like the Society for Classical Poets, where the regulars never met an inversion or elision they didn't like.

(Caveat: they also tend to be inordinately fond of poems redolent of certain political and societal views, which may or may not align with your own. And they also never tire of posting poems in which the authors congratulate themselves for being so gosh darn brave and clever and countercultural as to write in rhyme and meter rather than in free verse, which they condemn as the worst thing to ever happen to Western Civilization. I haven't taken a peek over there in a while...yep, they have lots of recent examples of all of the above.)


* Okay, yeah, there was that one incredibly profane blowjob poem of Auden's, but that was intended as an inside joke to be shared among friends, not for publication.

I am familiar with TSfCP, and while some of their translations of the works of Dante, Vergil, Horace, and the other Mediterranean masters I thoroughly enjoyed... their entire political jargon is, and forgive me for recycling a word, anathema to me. I'd scarcely consider some self-indulgent politicizing with the intent of reaffirming their bigoted (apologies to anyone contiguous to that province of the political aisle, but I'll speak candidly) to merit the epithet of poetry, must less the artistry. I recall distinctly a rather beautiful rendition of Petrarchan verse that piqued my interest, only for it to be swiftly vivisected by an aggregate of hymns to an orange-tinctured despot. Some were so vain and vapid that I almost mistook them for parody, bringing Poe's law to its absolute threshold. Despite what certain members may be inclined to believe, I am thoroughly against their ideologies. One of the reasons I nearly gave up on writing verse was because I did not wish to associate with them in any meaningful format. And, as much as I loathe free verse, I would sooner pen it for the rest of my life than cater to their outlet. Which makes those few poems that do have authentic beauty all the more bittersweet.

Of the poets you've listed, only have I genuinely enjoyed Stallings' work, and even then her poems concerning more modern things like Jetlag and Jigsaw Puzzles are not of interest to me. There is just... almost nothing in modernity I find enjoyable or even remotely worth my time. And I certainly can't enjoy a poem about the discourse, much less hope to write one. Medieval and ancient poems just appeal to me more; the way they sound, their mannerisms, their similes, their invocations to deities (Pagan or otherwise), the religious awe, the complexity of their speech, etc. To me, it's like comparing a candle to the chariot of the Sun.

N., I'm glad you find our politics and philosophy more congenial than that of the Society of Classical Poets, but unless you also can understand our overall aesthetics, we may not be able to give you what you need. We all have widely varying styles and subject matter, but we tend to agree that archaic language does not have much place in contemporary poetry except in parody or pastiche. I love classical, medieval, and Renaissance poetry, but I don't try to write like it.

Also, I concur with Julie in having small patience for poems that go on and on about women's beauty as a weapon. Back when it was the only weapon women were allowed to have, it may have seemed an interesting trope. These days, not so much. Several times I have read through your poem, but each time the language does not make much sense to me. I understand all the words, but when I try to ask myself what is happening in the poem, I can't figure it out. Milton used dense language and unusual syntax, too, but I can usually follow him much better.

I don't think anyone should tell you what to write about. But if they tell you what they are or are not getting out of what you write, it is worth listening to. We are willing to help if you are willing hear. You don't have to take every suggestion, but if you reject all of them, we can't benefit you.

Susan

N., I am confident that if you look at A.E. Stallings's "Jet Lag" and "Jigsaw Puzzle" less hastily, you will find that both those poems are making arguments very similar to the views you have expressed above in prose. They do so in a very oblique, playful, poetic way, by curating a mood and an experience rather than by making an explicit statement. There is far more going on in their depths than can be judged on the surface level of subject matter.

The first poem is so chock-full of Greek mythology that I am gobsmacked to hear it accused of too much modernity. I hope you can be persuaded to regard the poem as evidence that the antiquity of which you are so fond is still relevant, vibrant, and life-enriching in modern times. I'm frankly stunned that you are dismissing a poem that seems to resonate so well with your own more extremely-stated sensibilities.

The second poem can taken as a meditation on humanity's constant struggles to make sense of life's chaos by employing various strategies. Seeking the structural outlines of the puzzle (corners and edges) might suggest religion, or it might evoke using the stanzas, lines, and metrical requirements of formal poetry-writing. Grouping pieces by color could evoke the racial stereotypes that many resort to in order to quickly categorize perceived threats, or it could suggest a poets' attention to rhymes and patterns. Stallings leaves it up to the reader to connect those dots in whichever way they wish. I love what she does with the line lengths and meter over the course of the poem, to help underscore the experience of disconcerting absences and things falling apart. I find that exhilarating. Again, I can't believe you're dismissing this poem on the grounds of modernity, or that you apparently think that this deceptively simple poem would have been improved by giving it more flourishes or by making the language sound as if it was written a few centuries ago.

To me, neither poem is "about" its subject matter. To me, both are "about" inviting the reader to briefly experience life itself from a new perspective. I am genuinely sad that you seem to be declining these invitations from an arbitrary determination not to enjoy "modernity." I fervently hope you will give these two poems another chance.

Julie,

My interpretation of the current climate is of millions of people thinking the same things, of people not saying stuff that other people have not already said, of people being put into boxes and acting like the boxes are real. In this vehement disagreement there is not caring for other people's feelings, which undercuts leftist folk who think they are fighting for the oppressed, and rightist folk who think they are more "real world".

But to match your point, I did not get the impression that anything new was being attempted. I interpreted the poem as writing in style, and I did not think myself experienced enough to comment on 16th century (thanks Mark) style. N. Matheson is obviously more experienced then I am in that style, because I could not sustain the style myself.

N. Matheson,

You have smoothed out the rhetoric of the final four lines, but I still think that you are struggling to make use of Glenn's suggestion, in that the final lines don't quite land. While dabbling and playing a little, I also could not find lines that nicely scan, so, yeah, it is a puzzle.

Now the voice topic is interesting to me for two main reasons:

[1] On discussing certain topics, a friend of mine said that my English reminded him of Plato's Greek.
[2] I also discovered that my voice fitted naturally into or is harmonious with 19th century English.

Now I don't know any Ancient Greek, and I did not study 19th century English, but it just turned out that way. I too find the modern English idiom a little uninspiring, with one of the reason being the massive simplification of sentence structure post the invention of radio and television. I say it all the time: not everybody speaks the same English.

Also, for sure, without a persistent and consistent mythos, modern poetry can fracture into a million fragments of personal concerns like so many diary entries.

But all the above is part of what makes poetry writing a fun hobby for me.

Addendum: An a recent English friend of mine described my speech as "ancient". Which was fun!

The question I have is how much one benefits from posting a poem if the thread is going to turn into a conversation about the superiority of centuries-old English. How does that help a poem? Is posting it more of a statement? There is no point in pointing out all the beautiful poems of the last hundred years that use very contemporary English. But I would ask myself what is the point of posting my imitation 17th-century poem.

N., I’m curious: Are you writing in the language of a specific period or specific writers? If you’re writing, say, in the language of Spenser or Chapman, I suppose you should be using “liveth,” “wieldeth,” etc. But I think Shakespeare was already moving away from those forms, so Chapman himself may have been using old-fashioned language for poetic effect. I suppose your target period is mid to late seventeenth century: Milton and Dryden.

Note that your new second sentence is no longer grammatical—unless “that drop” is subjunctive, but I doubt anyone will read it that way. Here’s my modernized paraphrase as an illustration:

She outwits armies that soldiers drop their arms.

You need “so” before outwits. A metrically less problematic solution, though weaker, would be to replace “that” with “, and.”

Hi N,

This poem is somewhat hard to critique. Firstly, as others have said, because of the language: Is it genuine archaic English written by someone familiar with the rules and word-meanings of the time (16th century?). In which case, in my ignorance of such things, it's hard for me to critique those aspects. Or is it faux-archaic, in which case what are the rules? Does anything go?

Second, the poem is part of a larger work. I have certain expectations of a standalone poem and what it should achieve, but this poem may be functioning more like a paragraph in a novel, and it may its gain value more from how it fits the greater whole, something I know nothing of.

Disclaimers aside, on to the poem.

This poem is a portrait. It's of a woman, or at least, of some female being. That she has lives, plural, makes me wonder if this person is human, or someone more mythical, a goddess even. Someone who lives over and over, perhaps -- reincarnated -- and is unnaturally clever. On it's own the poem doesn't do too much for me, because I'm left with a sort of "so what"? The idea of a woman using sex/seduction as weapon is hardly new after all. But seen as part of a larger work, in which this character plays a part, maybe I'd like it more, maybe it gets its value in the context. Maybe the poem is primarily functioning to introduce this character?

The grammar of the first sentence has me confused. Is it comma-spliced? This is a complete sentence, with "as" meaning "like":

As whetted steel / in wanton war, she wields her beauty’s hilt.

But how does it attach to what precedes? The preceding part has a subject "A panoply of whispers, charms, and smiles" then never seems to get a verb. Also, I can read,

"A panoply of whispers, charms, and smiles [...] as [=like] whetted steel ..."

So maybe "as whetted steel ..." isn't attached to "she wields"? But either way, I'm still waiting on a verb that never seems to come.

Her wits out-legion all th’ embattled hosts
That soldiers trade their arms to beg for alms;

I like the word-play on legion / host (army), also sonically "arms" and "alms". I think you want "that" to mean "so that", in which case a comma after "hosts" would be needed, since you have two independent clauses. At least, in the 21st century it would. Without the comma, it doesn't make much sense to me.

A mortal arrow fletched with groans and sighs

This is hard to picture. I'd suggest "feathered sighs", but I think you want the groans for their sexual implications.

Her velvet arms, those slender instruments,
Which fan perdition’s flame with ecstasy,
Claiming usury’s interest for her loan
Of pleasures brief, which she demands in pain
With ev’ry idle bliss repaid to her
Times three, with jagged woes and barbed regrets.


I'm a bit confused here. I can see how her arms (and being in her arms) can bring ecstasy. But how/why do her arms, specifically, claim the interest on the loan? Why not also her lips, and so on? Plus, it seems odd to me that she (the whole person/being) demands the interest in pain, but only part of her, her arms, claims the the interest?

But then, given "instruments" (with its suggestion of torture which fits with the coming pain), I wondered if "arms" meant weapons, as does earlier in the poem (and her weapons are mentioned -- bow and dart), or "arms" in the sense of her upper limbs (to go with the earlier "lips"). If you mean in it in the sense of weapons, then I'd be specific:

Her velvet weapons, slender instruments,

"velvet weapons" is quite nice sonically too, I think. Though I'd still be unclear as to how the weapons (of seduction) claim the interest.

In fact, I'd say the poem leaves it unclear as how the interest is paid. The debtors are left in pain and woe, but how is that brought about by the same things that brought the ecstasy? Or if she brings it about some other way, then how? Does she blackmail them? Break their hearts? I guess maybe that's for the next instalment.

best,

Matt

Great critique as always, Matt, but I can set you straight on one thing: “panoply” is the subject of “lives.”

Ah, OK. Thanks Carl. I'd read "lives", as the plural of "life" -- not "lives" as verb.

So much for the reincarnation reading! That's a shame, I thought the mythic reading added something unexpected.

It still reads a comma-spliced to me, though. I still see two independent clauses (and it still seems ambiguous as to which clause belongs to what) I reckon it's this:

For in her lives a panoply of whispers, charms, and smiles more fierce than feminine. As whetted steel in wanton war, she wields her beauty’s hilt.

This seems less likely:

For in her lives a panoply of whispers, charms, and smiles more fierce than feminine, as whetted steel in wanton war. She wields her beauty’s hilt.

but given the comma, it's how I start reading it.

A semi-colon or dash would also work to replace the comma, of course.

-Matt

I was literally told by another person here to overhaul how I used commas. So I either use them in a historical format or use them in a modern sense. Either way, the poem fails.

I'll leave the poem up for others to examine, but I can declare that is more or less failed given the response.

Originally I had, but I was told to drop them.

What is your qualification for "failure"?

Considering my entire style is seen as an archaism that is not needed and my poem is seen as a confused jumble that actually offended people? I'd say I crossed the threshold somewhere about.

I’d put this differently. You’ve gotten three kinds of criticism:

1) Resistance to the archaic language. But you’re used to that by now. If you’re committed to seventeenth-century language, this criticism shouldn’t faze you.

2) Objections to the theme of “a woman using sex/seduction as weapon.” Those are Matt’s words, and it’s worth thinking about, but, as he added, the theme may gain value in context.

3) Specific suggestions on grammar, punctuation and word choice. These you can take or leave. I doubt that Julie’s comma rules (which I follow religiously) apply to the seventeenth century, but Matt’s suggested punctuation is intended to clarify meaning.

Three strikes and you’re out? I think not. It’s unproductive to lump everyone’s thoughts together into a single collective judgment that the poem is a failure. Try to see what each commenter has to offer you—or doesn’t.

I'll treat it as a learning experience, but I can toss this poem out. I don't think it can be redeemed.

N,

Of the 11 people who have commented, only 3 have discussed the poem's potential misogyny and none of those 3 said they were offended. As for "my entire style is seen as an archaism that is not needed", yes many have questioned the outdated language of this particular poem. But it seems to me a matter of observable fact that the style here is archaic. If this is the way you always write, and not just a stylistic exercise for one poem, then the majority of poets will probably reject it. It is up to you whether you listen to those voices or go your own lonely way.

Edit: I'm still unsure which is the case. In your introduction you seemed to suggest the language was a stylistic exercise, somehow fitting in with your fantasy world setting. But then later you also suggest a complete rejection of "modern" language, and even topics, in poetry.

N., I have often given advice that resulted in a worse version of someone's poem.

Please don't feel obligated to follow advice if it doesn't feel right, even if you feel pressured to. You're still the ultimate boss of your own work.