Tragedy Transpires

Jocasta—his wife, also his mother,

     Two daughters whose father, now their brother.

An unknown marriage to a displaced son,

     A suffocating curtain—one life undone.

Ophelia’s love, a swift change to dread,

     Tenderness gone—to the lake she is led.

Doubt triggers hate; Hamlet’s maddening state.

     Drowning befalls Ophelia’s ill fate.                                             

Antigone cannot bury the hexed,                                           

     No grave for her brother; uncle, what next?                                

Her sister: unstable, unsure, forlorn.                                              

     No matter the consequence, she will mourn.                    

Feuding families force two teenage deaths;                            

     Juliet lays without detected breath.                                  

Romeo.  Oh Romeo’s poisoned lips;

     Two doomed lovers—we shall never forget.

After revisions, the final submission looked like this:

“Agony Awaits Will’s Women”

To endure the ache and soreness she does—                         

Two girls, an uncle and father he was;                                   

An unknown marriage to the son displaced,                          

Blindness turns literal at the apparent disgrace.                   

To be trusted only an inch at most—         

Perfection with his horizontal boast;                                      

What a husband she has, as Prince Hal said;                         

Who does gesture for a Welsh-woman’s bed.                                             

Carefree intentions change quick into dread;                        

Hate breeds distrust; to the lake she is led.                           

Love turns wicked from his maddening state,                        

Drowning becomes one woman’s assured (certain) fate.                  

To bury one brother and not the hexed,                                

Uncle to father to uncle—what’s next?                                   

A sister she has, unsure and forlorn                                      

No matter the consequence, she will mourn                          

Two rivals at war force two teenage deaths;                   

No bridesmaids there for the bouquet to catch;                     

Waking from slumber—too late to detect,                               

Ending her life, may we never we forget.                                

Revision Account:

I always wanted to write about Thomas Hardy’s character Tess within the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles.  When class began, I wrote several one-line statements, but nothing seemed to juxtapose into a single unifying theme.  After several weeks of dead-ends, I set the Tess piece aside.  One night, after my graduate course in Shakespeare, I came home with an image of Prince Hal in The First Part of King Henry VI who boasts his wife’s only talent is lying on her back.  I found Prince Hal’s comment hilarious, like the nurse in Romeo and Juliet who speaks about a woman lying on her back.  And suddenly, I had an epiphany:  why not write about Shakespeare’s characters?  Many of Shakespeare’s plays have reoccurring themes, so I decided to write about the women in his tragedies.  I chose to base my poem on the tragedies because more people remember the heinousness of the tragedies which in turn, they remember the characters affected by the tragic events that unfold.

About five weeks prior to the poetry submission deadline, I gave my email address and phone number to five students in the class who needed to complete the draft exchange assignment too.  Two weeks before the deadline, none of the students contacted me, so I contacted Amber Buitron.  Although Amber presented her poem during one of the workshops, Amber willfully helped me in revising my poem.  I would suggest to future students—either completing draft exchanges for the poetry submission or the fiction submission—to exchange contact information with at least three people in the class, so they have a way to get in touch with someone.  I presented my fiction scene the week the poem was due, so I was trying to have someone make suggestions to the poem before I began writing my fiction piece, but Loralie Pope emailed me the night after my presentation.

“Tragedy Transpires” changed dramatically from a five stanza poem about the women within some of William Shakespeare’s tragedies.  Somehow the five editors overlooked the stanzas regarding Oedipus’s wife/mother, Jocasta, and Oedipus’ daughter/sister Antigone as not belonging to Shakespeare.  A quick change to the title solved the once-focused Shakespeare tribute.  I kept the iambic pentameter because each stanza already consisted of five feet and I wanted the rhythm to remain balanced.  I also kept the rhyming couplets because I grew attached to the rhyme scheme.  I removed the stanza about the wife in The First Part of Henry IV because many people were unfamiliar with the play and more questions arose about the content instead of the poetic form.

The first draft, titled “Agony Awaits Will’s Women,” did not list the character’s names, which formed more of a puzzle than an entertaining piece.  I changed the second line of the first stanza from “Two girls” to “Two daughters” because the rest of the stanza focused on the tragic elements within the family.  Line four of the first stanza once focused more on Oedipus’ fate, and not Jocasta’s, so I revised the line from “Blindness turns literal at the disgrace” to “A suffocating curtain—one life undone.”  I was concerned about not using enjambment within the poem because I did not want the poem to reveal a sing-song effect, but none of the editors believed it did.  While reading the course material one week, I decided to indent every other line of the poem which is commonly seen in ballads.

The second draft focused on the last stanza.  Lisa Hagemeister, an outside editor, suggested that I change line two because the line was awkward.  Line two once read “No bridesmaids there for the bouquet to catch,” which was deleted and now focuses on Juliet’s fake-death slumber:  “She lays on a stone without a single breath,” which still needing further revision, but was closer to the imagery I was looking for.  Lisa did not provide an existing line or reworking of the line, but her suggestion dramatically improved the line, the stanza, and the poem.  The line now reads “Juliet lays without detected breath which enforces the idea that revising is more than changing one or two words.

The third draft experienced the most revising, which is when I noticed that I had included women not created by Shakespeare.  Amber Buitron suggested several changes to the stanza regarding Antigone.  Amber suggested several changes in word choice, but the final edition lists Ismene’s characteristics instead of reading more like prose.  In the last stanza, line two, Amber suggested that I shorten the line.  I did not want to change the meter, so I revamped the line entirely trying variations of the imagery within the existing line, but added the renowned “Romeo. Oh Romeo” introduction.

Following the revisions and submission of “Tragedy Transpires,” I still believe the poem could be reviewed by others who share my love for literature and who have a passion for Shakespeare.  Writing poetry is difficult—more difficult than writing a twenty-page paper.  “Tragedy Transpires” may only be sixteen lines long, but many hours and much effort went into revising the poem.  Instead of adding more stanzas, I would like to try developing each stanza by adding more lines.  I was thinking about trying to tie the last line of stanza one to the second stanza, the last line of stanza two to the third stanza, the last line of stanza three to the fourth stanza, and then having the last line of the poem tie into the first line.  I placed the first draft below for others to see how drastically the poem changed.