Pirithous and the Hidden Muse

[Donald Q.]

Pirithous and the Hidden Muse


Pirithous: The Trapped Hero

All is cloaked in golden light. A memory
flutters by -- some jealous angel opened up  Personally I wouldn't use dashes like that, commas seem fine, or at the least a single dash instead of this mario kart double dash!
my eye -- then fills a thumbelina cup I feel like 'thumbelina' whilst having a nice rhythm, clashes tonally with the poem because of the reference. 
with tears. A decade or two, a decade or two

is born upon the thought -- a hundred
yes-I-wills and yes-I-dos
and even glimmers of me and you,
of early winter dew -- fast hardened Nice

by the thousand years of wounds
that my every inch of skin has kept,
this stretched out soul had stepped
long before my birth, beyond youth.

Yet into what? A million is a night
to what the saints and sons-of-God have coursed,
and prophecy, damned art, remains a door
to some dead heaven. How can we two fight?

I like this, has a really good rhythm  and rhyme throughout. I feel like you really give Pirithous a nice depiction, considering he's a bit of an idiot.  Nice stuff. 

The Hidden Muse: Vita Nova

Hell can be traversed. Neon demons:
have no fear of them. Prisms may divide
but the space of air that lies beyond
unites again, and the golden light

that oozes out of my torch smells sweeter
than any touch of flowers. My all-surpassing beauty
shall prevail, the Lethe's soul-erasing waters
shall be drained, and the addled monkey

who burned the New Year's chicken shall be flayed. This whole sentence is lovely. 
Below the Holy Virgin's face, what has God made
that should compare with me? So what if death,
with oceanic fingers, wets  Death's oceanic fingers is great

your pit of sand? Hell can be traversed:
my blue-eyed strong-browed face shall serve
as loving guide, and my perfume
shall be your purgatory.

I don't really know anything about La Vita Nuova, so I can't much crit the overall theme of this piece, but it's well written with some memorable images that i really enjoyed. I think maybe [and I'm not sure about this] I would change the stanza lengths; at the moment I feel like breaking them up evenly into fours isn't doing the poem justice. Also I feel perhaps the introduction is a pit opaque and doesn't give enough concrete context to begin with. Perhaps that's just my ignorance of the work you are referencing. Hope this was even slightly helpful, happy to re-feedback if needed.