This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-02-27 09:19:24 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!To Listen to Music While Reading this Poem, just Click Here!
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My Sometime Shepherd
He’s blind like me, and like me feels his way
From interstice to hardened northern rock.
And yet if it were mine for just one day
To use his eyes, I’d better shepherd my own flock.
He ranges wide as if he saw it all
As angels do, and not by human sense.
Impervious to ordinary gall
He stills and understands, where I would take offence.
I do not see what lights his eyes, what truth
Can guide him to inter a truth in rhyme.
Teiresias he is and Oedipus
Am I, who honour him with this imprinted crime.
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Copyright © February 2006 Mark Andrew Hislop
Additional Notes:
I can dredge through the vault too, matey boy.
This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas H. Smihula On Date: 2006-03-07 09:08:00
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.28571
Now this is one of my favorites of yours Mark. Like how you start this out showing blindness yet one must sheppard his own flock. You three stanza give it the structure needed and proper length for this thought. Well done was a joy to read. Thanks for sharing one of your archives...
This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-03-06 11:52:04
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
When I first read about Lycurgus, the Spartan Law-giver,
in Plutarch's Lives, his was, to me, the most endearing
of all inspiration a young boy could have. In ways he had
helped "spread my wings" that, I'm certain, even today
bear fruit.
Your first line and verse express that the mentor to
which you're enamoured is mortal, of so much more depth
than the god-heads we erect so much more superciliously.
Immediately, the read becomes an adventure, instead of
simply an expectation of redundance. "Impervious to
ordinary gall" is a splendid way of characterizing this
individual and your self-gauge is commentary cutting
swath both upon the poem as semi-narrative and personal.
Poetic license at its best.
The affiliation between you both becomes co-conspiracy
when you end the poem with, "honour him with this
imprinted crime" simply because (and all reviewers
should expect sole words in poems to have these
distinctive meanings)you use the modifier, "this"
instead of, his.
The quality is always IN a viewer when it has this
quality for by merely appreciating you observe
indisputably a value to the emulation.
This cannot successfully be except in poetic
rendering without some degree of self-deprecation...
hence the co-conspiracy element.
Dissuaded elegantly enough, as you do in another
successful poem.
Creating, again, a quandary of sorts over my struggle
to be fair in my voting allotment.
Crap.
JCH
This Poem was Critiqued By: arnie s WACHMAN On Date: 2006-03-01 09:44:56
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.85714
I have often wondered how people like Stevie Wonder can learn to play an instruement like he does. Today I go for my cataract surgery...so this has some meaning for me.You may have dredged this one up however it is a well written "imprinted" crime. Good on ya mate!
This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2006-02-27 14:39:23
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
MAH,
I wish I knew a good lawyer.
I've used "northern rock." And my rock was hard too.
I'll post the original.
There's people who want to be shepherds, and there's people who want to be sheep, and there's people who want to be left alone. Perhaps I should shut up, then.
Sure, belittle yourself . . . as you play the King part.
Truth shouldn't be interred. If you meant this in praise, maybe you should rethink that part.
If you think, with what's been going on here, I'm going to hazard a guess as to who Tiresias is . . .
Later,
MSS
PS - If i were wrong, it would just feed certain sharks in the water
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