This Poem was Submitted By: Medard Louis Lefevre Jr. On Date: 2005-10-21 21:56:00 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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Tuscany

Four walls, a ceiling, a floor One window barely lets in the light I close my eyes and dream awake I am lost somewhere in Tuscany The dark skies register gloom on the hills The master's fine strokes define a misery Tomorrow's painting will reveal divine love Shining God's light throughout Tuscany I am bound to this room in annoying repose My thoughts fly out of my self enclosure No prison can suppress my lust for you I am roaming around somewhere in Tuscany Your red-tiled villas welcome me home Your fields of gold clarify my reason Your sweet, sweet wine inebriates my health Making me drunk for the passion of Tuscany In here, I'm not here, in here, I am there I am suppose to be with you, my unaware mistress My presence remains past, seduced by your memories I am lost in you, somewhere in Tuscany

Copyright © October 2005 Medard Louis Lefevre Jr.


This Poem was Critiqued By: Lora Silvey On Date: 2005-11-07 18:33:04
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.94231
Medard, Great structure and wonderful flow. With the graphic verbiage this one speaks to the heart, some places are like people, once you fall in love with them you never stop and nothing can take their place, they become your secret lover and are always in your heart and mind. Like a lover, you close your eyes and see them, feel their breath (warm breezes) smell their scent (vinyards laden with fruit) and their colors (your red tiled roofs). I like all of your lines, difficult to choose any particular ones that struck my fancy. The whole is just that and a wonderful picture, even if you are bound to a room, the escape stood real in my mind. If this is you, and you are home bound I admire your tenacity for being willing to share your escape with us. Keep up the excellant work, I look forward to more from your pen., Kudos,, this is a clear winner in my mind. Warmest always, Lora


This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2005-11-05 03:22:13
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.60000
Dear Medard I half-expected this to be a little maudlin, but it's not. I mean, all the feelings, memories, images, etc that could move one to the "misery" you briefly refer to don't actually do that. The feeling this poem evokes in me, when I try to imagine myself as the speaker, is more a kind of amazed wonder at the intensity of the experience, rather than "Poor me". Your unaware mistress has left a powerful trace which far from leaving you bereft has heightened your senses. Reading again, I'm going to stick my neck out further and say that it is a poem of barely contained joy. Lesser poets would have used this as an occasion to contemplate suicide. Kudos to you for holding passionately, and appropriately stylishly, to life. Mark.
This Poem was Critiqued By: Marsha Steed On Date: 2005-11-02 23:08:40
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.50000
This could be a song Medard. I've a huge penchent for Tuscany (Even have a Travel forum by that name!) This delighted and enchanted me. 'Dream awake' and 'Register gloom', 'Bound to this room' and 'welcome me home' and 'annoying repose' all take the reader on a journey of long slow basking chimera of incongruous parts. This is both a fantasia and a lament. Your images are rich and succulant. Captivating. M
This Poem was Critiqued By: Terrye Godown On Date: 2005-10-24 22:37:18
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 1.00000
Wow, Medard, you really convey a spiritual energy here. I can identify with the visions that romance your mind in this piece. There's a loneliness that seeps out between the lines, but one that is more self imposed than anything else. Having traveled through Italy and then Greece last year, I can say that one can hardly help being absorbed by the warmth of Tuscany's charm, history and stoic "repose" (a word you've used which is truly fitting in that line up there). The culture alone can hijack your mind from the clutter of present day technologies and stress and lures one to question their priorities. The words you've chosen throughout the piece (dream, lust, inhebriate, seduced) give this poem a powerful magnetism and you relay this in a literary level that is most impressive. Whenever my memories travel back to Oia, Santorini overlooking the Agean Sea, I am captured in a very similar time warp. You've tied each stanza together in a dreamy sense that intensifies in the last lines, where you inrapture the reader in "Tuscany" repetitively - dropping preceding thoughts of "roaming", "God's light", "drunk with passion" and "lost". The structure is neat and balanced and it's duration is as timely as an afternoon daydream. I truly like the style of this one, Medard. By the way, your last name is as tricky to say as Bret Favre's, and I must admit, your first name is pretty unique also! Thanks for posting this one. It's great! - Terrye
This Poem was Critiqued By: Tony P Spicuglia On Date: 2005-10-23 12:12:46
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.83333
Medard, I could often echo the words of this piece. My longing for the “painting” that is “looking across the hills of Tuscany”- or those of Latium and Rome, or Campania and Naples, either way, the love remains. I enjoyed your piece, and in it, in the nuances of your speech you easily bring us the architecture, “even to the feel of the basilicas” in Tuscany, or the grape filled rolling hills. It has been a long while since I have been there, but the Chianti consumed “fresh” still haunts my wine pallet. The dualism of the love for a woman, and the love of the country/region is poignant in itself. “I close my eyes and dream awake”, I could say, those dreams I have often shared. Maybe only Andalusia in Spain, can come close to the absolute “passion of Tuscany” and the Italian culture. Most know of Florence and Pisa, but what is most appealing, as you point out, is the “consciousness” and region, its captivating resonance, its “seduction” once experienced. How much akin to the love of a woman. The comparison ends though, in that, from a monastery, minaret, or watching from the hills, the scent of Tuscany herself, those “memories will always seduce” the willing soul, long beyond the capriciousness of a woman. Excellent piece!!
This Poem was Critiqued By: Duane J Jackson On Date: 2005-10-22 07:16:12
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.50000
Hi Medard, In trying to analyse this dark piece, I've concluded that the central theme has to do with a longing for someone who is out of reach or has slipped away from the grip of your hand. The after effects seem to have wrapped you in misery and enhanced your lustful cravings for her presence to draw near. I also see a scuffle here --- between spiritual purity and a more worldly fuelling of desires. The poet, for me, seems torn. The poet also seems to be torn between two hopes - 'the re-emergence of God's light' and the thought of re-uniting with the source of this lust - 'I am suppose(d) to be with you'. But then, I might be over-analysisng. Interesting!!! Take care, Duane.
This Poem was Critiqued By: Regina M. Heller On Date: 2005-10-22 01:26:42
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 1.00000
This poem makes me 'long-for' and you have given a choice; long for the person, long for the place, long for the thing. I long for what is in that painting, a long lost place, but also for the love that is in that place. Long for the place that is in the painting, or go once step further and long for the love that was of the place depicted. It is just about longing and love. You don't constrain it, I like that. It made me long for a place in my heart that was a place I'd lived, but on another night it might make me long for a place in my heart that was a person I'd loved. One technical comment: I am 'supposed' to be with you in that last stanza rather than "suppose."
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