[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