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(2) Echo's Curse
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Echo Echo's Curse.
Unfortunate nymph,
compelled by her God Zeus,
to disguise his inappropriate affections,
by distracting his wife,
(during his frequent indiscretions)
with ceaseless chatter.
Exposed and cursed,
by an exasperated Hera,
She now wanders the world,
hiding in forests and deep valleys,
commanded only to repeat,
and otherwise unable to speak.
wow mwin i think i said this before but the way you express yourself is simply brilliant educated..
The highest compliment I can give to this poem (although even the profoundest compliment is undertstatement when speaking of this Poet and her Poems) is that it looks and sounds like a contemporary translation of an ancient poem from the Hellenistic style that flourished in Alexandria of the Ptolemies. I am not being pedantic here, only trying to state an accurate assessment of the poem's form, tone, and content. In each of these aspects, the virtues of the Alexandrian style are evidence. In form, compression governs: the maximum statement in the minimum amount of words. In tone, plain statement eliminates the first person narrative (the source of so much bad confessional poetry), and yet the viewpoint of the Poet is clearly evident. In content, the subject matter is obviously from classical mythology. But, in my opinion, the supreme aspect of the poem is that the Poet is most likely *not* consciously imitating the Alexandrians at all. She actually does command their virtues, without their excesses, in her poems (and in e-mail that I have seen). And, as I did with the Rose poems, I offer a serious request for the consideration of a sequence---either about Echo herself (and some of her other circumstances), or drawn from classical mythology.
Starward