[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Julie, Yves and Susan

Thank for the pushes and recommendations you have helped greatly as my vision started fogging.

I hope the third revision becomes the final.

Regards

Jan

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Jan,

While this was always gripping, I find it more accessible and moving now after revision. Thumbs up.

Jim

[Yves S L]

Hello Jan,

I do not think it is worth the loss of the following stanza:

What aspect will the goddess wear
the maiden, mother or the crone
inside the bleakness of despair.
The blind, black eyes of buildings stare.

[Alex Pepple]

Hello, Jan,

I agree with Yves about preserving the transcendental ending. Right now, the final stanza in Revision 3 — “We’ve lost all hope and have to bear / flies humming in a monotone” — while effective, essentially reiterates the prevailing themes of loss and decay already laid out in the previous stanzas. In contrast, your earlier version’s concluding stanza:

What aspect will the goddess wear / the maiden, mother or the crone / inside the bleakness of despair. / The blind, black eyes of buildings stare.

… offers a kind of volta — a mythic elevation that brings a broader lens to the devastation, adding symbolic and even archetypal weight to the poem. It feels like an imaginative leap that expands the emotional scope, rather than merely echoing the literal horror.

Also, I appreciated the progression of tone across the revisions — how you’ve shifted from stark grotesqueries (e.g., "Bodies broken, blood black") toward a more human and introspective mode, as in "Not one hand reaches out in care / as much is said but nothing’s shown.” That movement into the interior space of despair makes the poem feel more lived-in and less like reportage.

Continued good luck with this, Jan — it’s a powerful and resonant piece.

Cheers,
…Alex

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Gives and Alex

I am grateful to you both. I’m afraid I have to put this one onto the back burner as I cannot decide my problem being the mythic ending constraints the thrust to be a western one.

Vacillatingly,

Jan

[Yves S L]

Jan,

It depends if your goal is to present a specific ideological message, or to present the best poem that you find.

The world has enough ideology.

[Chelsea McClellan]

Hi Jan,

I'm going to go out on a limb here and respectfully present a differing opinion from the seeming majority on here about your original refrains. To my ear, they did not vary too much to disrupt the echo the repetition creates. In fact, I found them to be more interesting than the strict repetition you've revised to, though I do appreciate the other edits that you've made.

I would encourage you to feel free to play with the strictness or looseness of the refrains. It can make a really powerful poem to have a fairly strict refrain that plays with the lines around it. It can also make a really interesting and playful poem to mess around with variation to a higher degree, even if sacrificing a bit of the echo. I would argue it depends on the individual poem and poet as to how much echo you want to hear in your villanelle. And critics are more than welcome to call it a loose villanelle or a wannabe villanelle. If an interesting poem is produced from it, I say so be it.

I know many will not agree with me, and that's okay, but I just thought it might be helpful to hear a different opinion, if only for future reference.

Take care,
Chelsea