[Susan McLean]

Odysseus Afterwards

Home, I assess what's left: my wary wife,
still beautiful, but taut as a strung bow,
the softness of her cheek worn down by grief;

my son, whose ache I honed into a knife;
my father, tattered, leaning on his hoe,
a humbled man, shorn of his strength and wife,

who shares a hut with slaves; my land, whose chief
townsmen allowed their sons to overthrow
my household, woo my wife, and bring to grief

my son. For their contempt they paid their life,
their corpses stacked beneath my portico,
my slaves hanged who defied my son and wife.

But solitude still rings me like a reef.
My wife watches me guardedly, as though
I might yet prove a fraud. My father's grief

dogs him to my palace. Time's a thief
who torches what he steals. I can't regrow
the tree my bed was built on. O my wife,
my son! Nothing is evergreen but grief.


Revisions:
S2L1 "ache" was "aches"

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Susan—

Very impressive poem. You use the villanelle-inspired form with great skill, presenting a complex characterization in language that sounds completely natural. It is interesting to compare your characterization of post-adventures Odysseus with Tennyson’s Ulysses.

Glenn

[Susan McLean]

Glenn, I am glad to hear it worked for you. After thirty years of teaching The Odyssey, I found myself to be skeptical of the "happily ever after" ending, but also unwilling to buy into Tennyson's gung-ho adventurer. I had originally tried to write this poem eleven years ago, but didn't get very far. Deciding to try it as a variation on a villanelle enabled me to work through some of the feelings I had about long-term separations and the reunions afterwards.

Susan

[R. Nemo Hill]

I love this one, Susan.

Nemo

[Joe Crocker]

Hi Susan

Deftly and effectively done. It’s hard to coax a proper story with incident, action and feeling out of a villanelle but you have succeeded.

One possible nit. S5L2 “My wife watches me guardedly, as though”. That makes three “my wife”s, and “wife” is also the end-rhyme in one of the repetends. I realise that the repetitions of my wife, my son, my father etc are deliberately obsessive. But in this line, if you were to replace “My” with “A” so that the line read “A wife who watches guardedly, as though” then it would add some distance between the protagonists and would underline Odysseus’s misery. (It would also conform better to IP. But I know you like to insert missteps into your poems)

Joe

[Susan McLean]

Nemo, that's good to hear.

Joe, the repetitions of "my wife," "my son," "my father," are obsessive, but the "my" is also possessive. Odysseus is used to being able to control negative things and take charge, but here he is at an impasse. So I didn't want to change "my wife" to "a wife." I did consider other verbs, such as "observes," that would smooth out the meter, but "watches" had exactly the overtones I wanted. What feel like metrical missteps to you feel more like conversational variety to me. But if I find another verb that fits the tone I'm trying for, I'll consider changing to that.

Susan

[Hilary Biehl]

I've always found the end of the Odyssey horrifying but never thought about it quite from this angle - what it would be like to live in a familial relationship with Odysseus after all that happens/that he does, and what it would be like for him to live with them.

I'm not loving "aches" for Telemachus. Is there another word that would work there?

[Susan McLean]

Hilary, I originally had "ache" but then changed it to "aches." But I think you are right that that does not quite fit. It suggests physical pains, but I meant to suggest the ache of growing up without a father and being disrepected by all of the older men around him. So I have made it singular again.

Susan

[Hilary Biehl]

Susan, I do think it works better in the singular.