Penelope Motel

[Valerie Please]

Sounds like a great idea for a film. 

Yes? Tell me about this presentation.

This poem feels like a stream-of-consciousness, (which isn't a bad thing) but I think the piece could play a larger role just like what Tiger said, there needs to be more than just playful rhymes, my advice is to get rid of those cliché lines (in fact maybe all of them) as they dreadfully cheesy.  Maybe re-write the poem, this reminds me of a presentation I wrote called The Aphrodite and in the passages of the poem it takes place outside of a motel.

It was just an epic poem I wrote, about a love for a goddess named Aeries, and they travel to Los Angeles together to fall in love.

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Just as a general thanks for reading and taking the time to respond. I’m thinking the concept might be stronger if I removed the framing story and rewrote it putting everything in Penelope’s mouth.

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Thanks for the read and the feedback. It’s definitely not intended as an absence makes the heart grow fonder poem. So it’s good to know that the objective hasn’t yet been reached. I appreciate the perspective and the challenge to raise the bar on the poem.

(Note: this was posted yesterday and someone realized that a line I’d used appeared in an old song. No good! But thanks for the catch, Exit. I reworked it and have had way too much fun in the process. I think it is too long and redundant and just needs editing. In short, I need opinions. Please share yours.)

I missed you more darling
when you weren’t here.
How I longed to hold you,
your sweet voice in my ear.

But then you came back
and I soon had my fill.
I’m not homesick no more,
I’m a new kind of ill.

Long nights I spent honey,
dreaming of you.
My heart beating lonely,
my heart beating true

You appeared in the morning
and I awoke from the dream.
Maybe we shouldn’t 
have changed horses midstream.

So here we are it’s 
now and always my dear
Babe, you know I can’t miss you
if you’re always here.

The waiting is over
There’s no more reason to grieve
But I’ll never want you 
if you never leave

What’s that you said 
about forever and a day?
You can’t be my dream lover 
if you are planning to stay.

I’ll be your dear, 
sweet Penelope
Loving wife, she’s a model
of patient fidelity 

Here I sit, sweet Penelope 
welcoming my hero home
But I can’t help but wonder
if she was just happy alone. 

Having unabashed fun with words is always a good thing. In this case I think you've made the mistake of letting concern for rhyme and sometimes meter, drive the writing of the poem. You've essentially got a series of rhyming couplets all reiterating that "absence makes the heart grow fonder"  There's certainly an idea for a poem here, but Penelope needs to play a larger role than some playful rhymes.

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Thank you for the read and the feedback and for the challenge to push the poem in a more interesting direction.

(Note: this was posted yesterday and someone realized that a line I’d used appeared in an old song. No good! But thanks for the catch, Exit. I reworked it and have had way too much fun in the process. I think it is too long and redundant and just needs editing. In short, I need opinions. Please share yours.)

I missed you more darling
when you weren’t here.
How I longed to hold you,
your sweet voice in my ear.

But then you came back
and I soon had my fill.
I’m not homesick no more,
I’m a new kind of ill.

Long nights I spent honey,
dreaming of you.
My heart beating lonely,
my heart beating true

You appeared in the morning
and I awoke from the dream.
Maybe we shouldn’t 
have changed horses midstream.

So here we are it’s 
now and always my dear
Babe, you know I can’t miss you
if you’re always here.

The waiting is over
There’s no more reason to grieve
But I’ll never want you 
if you never leave

What’s that you said 
about forever and a day?
You can’t be my dream lover 
if you are planning to stay.

I’ll be your dear, 
sweet Penelope
Loving wife, she’s a model
of patient fidelity 

Here I sit, sweet Penelope 
welcoming my hero home
But I can’t help but wonder
if she was just happy alone. 

I don't know if the sing-song nursery rhymey quality of the verse was meant to be ironical, but it's not achieving its purpose (if indeed it had a purpose). The first two lines of the poem are the exposition of the entire poem. It is not clear what the rest of the lines achieve. There is no twist thereafter, nor is there a further exploration of Penelope's psychology, although the subject matter is ripe for such a venture. Nor indeed, is there afforded the reader a measure of sonority in the verse.

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Thanks for the read and response. Clunky meter simply won’t do and the specificity of your feedback is helpful.

(Note: this was posted yesterday and someone realized that a line I’d used appeared in an old song. No good! But thanks for the catch, Exit. I reworked it and have had way too much fun in the process. I think it is too long and redundant and just needs editing. In short, I need opinions. Please share yours.)

I missed you more darling
when you weren’t here.
How I longed to hold you,
your sweet voice in my ear.

But then you came back
and I soon had my fill.
I’m not homesick no more,
I’m a new kind of ill.

Long nights I spent honey,
dreaming of you.
My heart beating lonely,
my heart beating true

You appeared in the morning
and I awoke from the dream.
Maybe we shouldn’t 
have changed horses midstream.

So here we are it’s 
now and always my dear
Babe, you know I can’t miss you
if you’re always here.

The waiting is over
There’s no more reason to grieve
But I’ll never want you 
if you never leave

What’s that you said 
about forever and a day?
You can’t be my dream lover 
if you are planning to stay.

I’ll be your dear, 
sweet Penelope
Loving wife, she’s a model
of patient fidelity 

Here I sit, sweet Penelope 
welcoming my hero home
But I can’t help but wonder
if she was just happy alone. 

Hello Valarie Please,
I think this is pretty good. I've got no problem with it playing around with a single concept, ie. "familiarity breeds contempt", and each quatrain giving inventive and amusing articulations of that; it's in that kind of playful lyrical poetry style. There are cliches but they are there to be subverted, so they don't really count as cliches. For example "you can't be my dream lover" is a terrible cliche but it is made funny by the following line "if you're planning to stay." and so on. It's basically messing around with our expectations of a traditional love poem cannily using Odysseus and Penelope as archetypes of that tradition. 

With that being the case my criticism is the meter needs to be tighter. Because it's supposed to be tongue in cheek I feel like you have to be really spot on with the rhythm. Like a good stand-up, you've got to hit every beat. And this doesn't. For example, instead of "The waiting is over / There’s no more reason to grieve" maybe "The waiting is over / no more reason to grieve". And so on. 

Also, I don't know if it's some typos or what but I couldn't quite follow who was supposed to be speaking in the last couple of stanzas. I think you went from Penelope to Odysseus?

anyway, thanks for sharing.