Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Readwriterevise!


This week's readwritepoem prompt is to revise one of the poems we wrote for napowrimo. I chose to revise my Guinevere poem. You can see the original here. I wound up not making as many changes as I thought I would, just a few tweaks here and there to the third and last stanzas. I'm happier with it now.


Her Sword
In the tower of the convent
In the tangle of her mind
Guinevere sighed and
Reached back in time
And wondered …
If Excalibur
Had been for her
What might have been?

If woman could part
Blade from stone
And take for hers
The sovereign crown
Would love still have
To sacrifice to law?

Could she thwart
Merlin’s prophecy
And set the fate
Of women free
From shouldering
The burden of the fall?

Could the kingdom
Ever belong to her at all?

If power and glory
Were hers to take
And the beginning
Of it, hers to make,
For the three of them
And Camelot’s sake,
Should she not
Hurl
That fabled sword
Into the lake?

9 comments:

  1. Erin, I'm glad you've taken up Guinevere's cause. This is a great poem.

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  2. Wonderful, but so was the other version :-).
    I have an award for you over on my blog :-).

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  3. I didn't see how you could improve upon the original. Silly me. This is Erin Davis we're talking about! I'm just so wowed by your poetry. I may have to take a class this summer. Wouldn't you like to be a guest teacher at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis?

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  4. Wonderful rhythm and rhymes here. Wonderful message, too.

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  5. Erin, I like your revised ending better.

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  6. Not many tweaks here ~ just goes to show sometimes revision is a state of mind!

    Claire

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  7. nicely done....i have difficulty revising...I usually just throw away...nice photo>>>>> with sweet baby

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  8. Glad you posted a revision. I may have missed reading this, and that would have been a loss.

    Terrific idea here, nicely executed. I like the new ending, too.

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  9. I liked the revised ending better, too. Also, loved (in both versions) the subtlety of the rhyme, how it almost disappears into the poem, makes it musical without being too obvious. This is really lovely.

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