Poem Found Here: "Eurydice" by Carole Stone
This is a persona poem from the myth of Eurydice. I think the couplet form and the terseness of the lines really play with this character trying to rationalize and cope with being away from her "love." "I thought I wanted to return to earth. / What for?" The doubt written a matter-a-factly brings a sense of humor to the poem. Humor as coping, at first.
"My husband's harp playing / the trees sighing, animals moaning?" Note, Her husband, Orpheus, mourns her death through song which affects the world around him into being just as sad as he is. For these lines, I feel like it more of a mood -- negative and sad, than semantics and the rules.
But the strictness of rules comes into play, "Hell is being with or without a husband. / Transgression is accidental, / like the way Orpheus looked back." Lot's of ideas running through these lines. The first of these lines is a limbo in a sense -- death do you part or love you forever. Does one stay loyal or move on? With Orpheus he loved and moved on at the same time -- not by choice but by some doubt, some small accidental "transgression."
The failure is his, but for her, the emotion of being left behind is what she is dealing with and she's dealing with the idea of, "But in Hell, there is no need to repent." There's no need to ask for forgiveness or be weighed down by failure. What is is what is. What she found from such tragedy is her own voice, her own song, "So now I can make a harp of myself, / sing with my body."
Her voice, her ability to mourn and be mourned, to be an individual from hell rather than Orpheus' failure.
"My husband's harp playing / the trees sighing, animals moaning?" Note, Her husband, Orpheus, mourns her death through song which affects the world around him into being just as sad as he is. For these lines, I feel like it more of a mood -- negative and sad, than semantics and the rules.
But the strictness of rules comes into play, "Hell is being with or without a husband. / Transgression is accidental, / like the way Orpheus looked back." Lot's of ideas running through these lines. The first of these lines is a limbo in a sense -- death do you part or love you forever. Does one stay loyal or move on? With Orpheus he loved and moved on at the same time -- not by choice but by some doubt, some small accidental "transgression."
The failure is his, but for her, the emotion of being left behind is what she is dealing with and she's dealing with the idea of, "But in Hell, there is no need to repent." There's no need to ask for forgiveness or be weighed down by failure. What is is what is. What she found from such tragedy is her own voice, her own song, "So now I can make a harp of myself, / sing with my body."
Her voice, her ability to mourn and be mourned, to be an individual from hell rather than Orpheus' failure.
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