Death of Cu Chulainn by MirachRavaia on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

:star-empty: Overall

:star-empty: Vision

:star-empty: Originality

:star-half: :star-empty: Technique

:star-empty: Impact

I applaud your choice of setting in a less popular mythology...it's not every day someone chooses to pen about Irish mythology. I also admire your choice of the diciotto, a form I myself would not write in, to convey the heroism of the protagonist. However, I couldn't help but feel rather underwhelmed when I read the piece. This is for a couple of reasons.

1. The rhyme is essential to diciotto form. There's only two requirements: the 18 syllable three-line stanzas, and the terza rima. I felt that some of your near rhymes fell flat and lacked that prosodic power (shiver/river and fever, sword and hold). The repetition of lands in two different lines, while employing different meanings, was simply not very fresh.
2. The flow of the piece is disrupted by uncomfortable grammar. For the subject of the piece, the grammar either feels too colloquial at times, or too forced. Lines such as "Soon you'll your father meet" or "True warrior does not bow, but stands" are very awkward to read, both on a visual and an auditory scale.
3. The poem doesn't move sufficiently beyond the sensory. It is dramatic, certainly, but I couldn't help but shrug off the feeling that there was not much more past a simple description of things. The beginning was better in this regard, but as the poem ran its course I couldn't really empathize with what was going on.

These three issues, I feel, are really hampering the poem from reaching its full potential. In the end, I had a feeling that the form was cramping the content...I would like to see the story stand firm just as Cu Chulainn did, fighting to the death, but in the end it only felt constrained by the diciotto.

Still, congratulations on your victory in our contest! I hope you'll continue to submit to FFF!

*Parsat