Eurydice & Orpheus by Mark Iwin

Though all mythology is fairly interesting, I can' t claim much knowledge/study into it. So, admittedly, I had to google up the names. Upon seeing a brief retelling of the story, I instantly recognized the tale, if not the specifics.

When I clicked on the link for this poem, I expected it to go more in detail about the events in the story/be the 'whole' story. (Basically, a man faces the world of the dead to find his departed love, but disobeys the rules of getting her out by looking at her before they've reached the light of the upper/our world.)

I think in the poems narrow focus on just his craving for his love, how he couldn't not look/speak her name being that close, finally having her back after waiting so long... it worked very well, actually exceeding my first expectations.

I love the way it starts, with the comparison of his wish to turn his head the seed, in his mind, of all the things seeing her will bring, his uncertainty that if he looks back she'll even be there...and what the seed turns into, the beginning of his downfall. It fits in easily that he is trying to tell himself to wait, to remove the insecurity/have faith it'll happen...which is the hardest thing to do when singing loves name is the thing one has to avoid, even though he knows that "every time we speak we stun the word". The build up is well played out too--the reader can feel it as the wise logical words of wait start to fail for him as he becomes more and more enraptured in the humming-almost-speaking auditory feeling of her name on his lips. What lover could be that strong? --And then, the 'dismantling sound' it made when it actually came out, when he actually gave in and turned his head--to find how terrible it is, to free himself of the self-control trapping him away from his desire, and then have his desire turned away from him just for him having been so bold. A crushing defeat, to be 'watching, no longer waiting'--the thing he's wanted all along finally in front of him--to just disappear, 'like a shovel' (a second death, though this retelling doesn't go into detail of the first...)

Eurydice & Orpheus by Mark Iwin

Long her darkness there, his turning head
a seed, his longing the imagined foliage not
come, his uncertainty the yellow
leaves. "The here is her," he said, over and over

without turning round. Wait he kept
thinking, and he waited in that waiting
and knew every time we speak we stun
the word, so he hummed, but the humming

grew, each bee'd syllable toward
a name, and as he turned
almost surprised to read its sign—Eurydice
Eurydice—now the radio of his voice

dismantling sound. How terrible and free
he stood, watching, no longer
waiting, then she picked her beauty up
like a shovel and was gone.

Copyright © 2009 Mark Iwin All rights reserved
from Tall If
Western Michigan University
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission