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Poetry
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My-stake
By Merrybegot
17 December 2006
My-Stake
 

There the stake doth stand erect,
In the village for all to see.
The guilty woman’s hands and feet are tied,
Fearful air travels through her neck.
 

Holding a lighted torch,
There doth stand a man of dark complexion.
Holds it to the pile of wood,
It starts to crackle, it starts to burn.
 

The innocent woman’s skin begins to burn,
A smell so putrid to those about.
The flames that consume light up eyes,
An important lesson a woman must learn.
 

 

 

I came up with this poem within about five minutes whilst watching a programme on TV one Saturday night and when writing it all the things I learnt in English literature when analysing poems at school came back to me.
 

I quite like this poem, for those who haven’t guessed it’s about the burning of innocent women who were found to be ‘witches’ in the 16th and 17th century.
 

The title is ambiguous; it can be read as my stake as it is written or mistake.
‘My stake’ meaning that the accused woman knew that the stake was for her and ‘Mistake’ meaning that the killing of women who were accused of witchcraft was wrong, they were not witches.
 

‘In the village for all to see.’ – Burnings, or any type of killing was common and a past time for many folk.
‘The guilty woman’s’ and ‘The innocent woman’s’ – This is a good contrast, to the villagers, the woman is guilty, but in reality she is innocent.
‘Fearful air travels through her neck’ – This means the woman is breathing.
‘An important lesson a woman must learn.’ – In other words, women will have to tread carefully, not to do anything suspicious, or she too will be on the stake.

Reviews

Written by IronMaiden (9 comments posted) 17th December 2006
it's a short poem, and i probably would like it to be a bit longer. your imagery is good and i had no problem picturing and feeling and smelling, which is great.  
 
I think, though, you should maybe break up your lines. The way the poem reads causes for a better strcuture. Each line is basically one phrase. Beacuse it's not a rhyming poem and is of no particular 'form', you can get away with fragmenting the phrases in startegic places to make it more concrete.  
 
But that's about it - otherwise, I quite like it.

Written by ellipinnock (1753 comments posted) 17th December 2006
I thought this was a potentially promising piece although I do have a couple of niggles. 
 
I'm not keen on chucking 'doth' in to make the piece sound 'of the time' - for me if you're not going to go completely authentic with the language (and I don't think you should) then just stick to plain modern english, it won't make the piece any less effective. 
 
Also, I don't think you need the blurb at the bottom, especially with this piece which is relatively straightforward. If the reader doesn't get it then either they're being dense or you haven't communicated well enough but if you put an explanation at the bottom that is longer than the actual poem my guess is you will put a lot of readers off! 
 
A bit of a restructure and a tweak here and there and you could have yourself a nice piece. An interesting read. 
 
Elli

Written by Phil (6713 comments posted) 17th December 2006
Interesting piece. Lots to like here, but Elli (above) is talking a lot of sense. Added to that, plain and simple fonts are easy to read on screen, but curly fancy ones are not. 
 
Phil.

Written by Merrybegot (2 comments posted) 17th December 2006
Ok sorry, thats what it was written in, in MSWord and I just copied and pasted it from there.  
 
Thanks for the advice, I shall bear it in mind. 
 
M x

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