Brigit's Flame Entry Week 2
Jul. 17th, 2011 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiremauveTitle: Sacrifice
Author: eiremauve
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, disturbing images
Word Count: 122
Prompt: Every family has its secrets
A/N: Loosely inspired by a story in Herodotus, about Babylon's revolt.
They say that we were killed by evil spirits,
to soothe their new wives fears.
There is truth in that,
for the brave ones that fought against it,
no matter what their leaders wanted.
They wanted to revolt,
and for in the enevitable seige,
it was decided to murder us,
because we would waste resources,
sparing their mothers
and a person to make bread,
to avoid we women wasting bread.
Some were horrified by the decision,
not wanting the blood of their blood to die,
but they could not stop it.
Their leaders had no hearts
and therefore could not see the cost.
So we women were rounded up into town-square and strangled.
The good men will be haunted by nightmares forever.
A/N 2: Here is the passage:
"While the Persian Fleet sailed for Samos, Babylon revolted. The revolt had been long and carefully planned; indeed, preparations for withstanding a siege had been going quietly on all throught the reign of the Magus and the disturbances which followed the rising of the seven against him, and somehow or other the secret never leaked out. When the moment finally came to declare their purpose, the Babylonians, in order to reduce the consumption of food, herded together and strangled all the women in the city-each man exempting only his mother, and one other women which he choose out of his household to bake his bread for him. Herodotus, The Histories. Book 3 (Thalia): 150-152
I mentioned at the beginning of my account how the Babylonians strangled their women to save food, and it was in consequence of this that Darius, in order to prevent the race from dying out, compelled the neighboring peoples each to send a certain stated number of women to Babylon. In all, as many as fifty thousand were collected there. It is from these that the present inhabitants are descended. Herodotus, The Histories. Book 3 (Thalia):159"
Author: eiremauve
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, disturbing images
Word Count: 122
Prompt: Every family has its secrets
A/N: Loosely inspired by a story in Herodotus, about Babylon's revolt.
They say that we were killed by evil spirits,
to soothe their new wives fears.
There is truth in that,
for the brave ones that fought against it,
no matter what their leaders wanted.
They wanted to revolt,
and for in the enevitable seige,
it was decided to murder us,
because we would waste resources,
sparing their mothers
and a person to make bread,
to avoid we women wasting bread.
Some were horrified by the decision,
not wanting the blood of their blood to die,
but they could not stop it.
Their leaders had no hearts
and therefore could not see the cost.
So we women were rounded up into town-square and strangled.
The good men will be haunted by nightmares forever.
A/N 2: Here is the passage:
"While the Persian Fleet sailed for Samos, Babylon revolted. The revolt had been long and carefully planned; indeed, preparations for withstanding a siege had been going quietly on all throught the reign of the Magus and the disturbances which followed the rising of the seven against him, and somehow or other the secret never leaked out. When the moment finally came to declare their purpose, the Babylonians, in order to reduce the consumption of food, herded together and strangled all the women in the city-each man exempting only his mother, and one other women which he choose out of his household to bake his bread for him. Herodotus, The Histories. Book 3 (Thalia): 150-152
I mentioned at the beginning of my account how the Babylonians strangled their women to save food, and it was in consequence of this that Darius, in order to prevent the race from dying out, compelled the neighboring peoples each to send a certain stated number of women to Babylon. In all, as many as fifty thousand were collected there. It is from these that the present inhabitants are descended. Herodotus, The Histories. Book 3 (Thalia):159"
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 10:15 pm (UTC)What a haunting poem. Well done.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-20 02:06 pm (UTC)I do think that some of your lines are a little awkward. These lines in particular show that: "They wanted to revolt,
and for in the enevitable seige,
it was decided to murder us,
because we would waste resources,"
Aside from the spelling error (enevitable should be inevitable), "it was decided to murder us because we would waste resources" is murky even in prose, but in poetry it simply sounds stilted. In your poetry you seem to do a lot of "telling". It also doesn't help that "it was decided to murder us" is passive voice and sounds awkward no matter where it's said, but I think you could examine this poem more closely and find ways to say the same things with more elegance. I did, however, LOVE the first line, which I think worked wonderfully and it drew me in straight away!
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-21 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 02:16 pm (UTC)dodos rolling out the edit wagon,he pauses
Date: 2011-07-22 12:12 pm (UTC)Alas, what we are left with is a sort of stilted working of the stanzas. I think a good deal of improvement could be accomplished just by a different use of punctuation, and perhaps by rearranging some of the lines? Just saying.
Re: dodos rolling out the edit wagon,he pauses
Date: 2011-07-22 02:15 pm (UTC)