Dougsie - thanks for the detailed crit, and apologies for not getting back to you sooner, but I had to go to the market (I got some terrific shitake, and I'll saute that up in a light sesame oil with spinach from the garden, maybe some konbu flakes on top, and with it I think I'll do fresh trout grilled on lemon slices) but I agree that your idea of cutting the first two stanzas, leading with S5, and then redoing the villanelle as a sestina is not without merit. As a matter of fact, I played with a very similar approach on some of the earlier drafts (what real writers do is they really write, write, write, write - and then they rewrite) - a double sestina, actually, but in five-line tanka stanzas - and decided against it, but it was a coin toss. Poetry, as I have often pontificated, is a craft of compromises (which reminds me of an incident with this courtesan I met at a little geta shop in Nihonbashi, in 1932..) and my feeling is that if you're unhappy with the compromise I selected, we are all entitled to our opinions, and - parenthetically - if you don't like it, you can go and fuck yourself for all I care.
Thanks again to all for the feedback and suggestions. This thread demonstrates once again the value of the Sphere workshop, which would be even better if I didn't have to deal with so many idiots.
[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited July 01, 2006).]
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