Happy Saturday once again, my friends! I’m back with another Writing Reflection. This week, I want to focus on a poem that falls under a category that I write quite often: poetry based on mythology. If you have followed my profile for a while, you have probably noticed that I like to write poetry based on Greek and Roman mythology. In particular, I like to write this kind of poetry using variations of the poem style of the nonet, but instead of nine lines, I use twelve or, sometimes, thirteen lines (although this is rare, and usually only because I have miscounted and don’t want to go through the work of rewriting the poem to be twelve lines).
The poem that I have chosen for today happens to be a true nonet, consisting of nine lines with the syllable count starting at nine and descending until it reaches one for the final line. (For more information on the nonet style, visit the Writer’s Digest website.)
Today, I have chosen to analyze my poem “Echo Cries”. As with other poems, I am going to include the text of the poem here as well as a link to the original post so that you can go check it out in its original form:
I am Echo in the urban wilds
Forever plagued by my own voice
Hardly heard and never seen
Overcome by others
Louder than I am
Let me be heard
As myself
Hear me
Please
–Stephanie Hoogstad, “Echo Cries”
Before I decided to post this poem here on Vocal, I actually tried to submit it for LitMag’s Emily Dickinson Award. Unfortunately, it was not chosen for the award, and so I decided to post it here instead. Their loss, your gain, right?
Well, the rejection still had me wondering why it was rejected in the first place. After all, don’t we all wonder why our pieces get rejected when we aren’t told why? Our knee-jerk reactions are always either that the judges or editors don’t have good taste or, in the opposite direction, that we just aren’t talented enough to be considered. We rarely are rational enough in our thinking to have a good, balanced reaction and to analyze our work for any flaws immediately following a rejection—at least, that has always been my experience.
Now that more than a year has passed since the rejection, I think that I can handle looking at the poem with a more impartial eye and critique it more fairly to see what the reason might have been for the rejection.
Let’s start with what is working well. There is a strong voice here and original concept with placing a Greek mythological figure in a modern setting, as well as a clear message. The use of the nonet style has allowed for a controlled sense of vocabulary, allowing for each word to be used with purpose. Ending the poem on “please” combined with the nonet style also creates a sort of echo to the ending, which fits the subject of the poem very strongly.
Unfortunately, one might say the message of the poem—the need to be heard in a modern world where individualism itself is not a novel concept—is unoriginal. The way in which it is approached is new, but the message is not. The idea of being an individual in a world overcome by those who are not individuals is even covered by Emily Dickinson herself in her poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” So, to enter such a poem for the Emily Dickinson Award might have been a bit heavy-handed.
Sometimes, when you submit a poem or story to a contest or publication, it might be rejected not because of the quality of the work but because of how well it fits the contest or publication in question. You might think that it fits but, perhaps, it might fit a little too well—as in it’s a bit cliché—or it might not actually fit quite as well as you had thought. That does not mean that you necessarily need to change your work or give up on it; you just need to keep looking for where it belongs.
What about you? Have you ever tried to submit your work somewhere only to find out that it didn’t quite fit there? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
As always, if there’s an old piece of mine that you think I should revisit, leave that in the comments as well!
