This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-11-21 00:11:41 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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Quill

I write in haste: your footsteps hit  the corridor, like an interrogation. Our years sprinted quite unnoticed - until you chose bastinado for us. Youth, studious of your pleasures, bright fall your eyes on any horizon that seems to glint axe-like and red like a forebear bloody and underfoot. Can she-spider’s mates ever learn to forgive her her turning of the screw? Though you come now, once you find this quill, ink, this fate will have passed on, to you.

Copyright © November 2006 Mark Andrew Hislop


This Poem was Critiqued By: Dellena Rovito On Date: 2006-12-03 17:19:36
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.50000
Mark, Wonderful.......even if I'm a bit unsure as to who did what. Someone got hit with a stick! It seems to me you would write and your mother? would be on you to do different. If she reads you now it will be passed on to her? I don't know......it just is good. Something to ponder. Dellena


This Poem was Critiqued By: Ellen K Lewis On Date: 2006-11-29 09:59:34
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.88889
Hi, Mark. What a circle of the viciousness of life! I have some favorite lines and I love the two-headed metaphor of the she-spider. I write in haste: your footsteps hit the corridor, like an interrogation.....I think I can see the dust turning as the footsteps approach, and the feeling of fear and haste is strong! Youth, studious of your pleasures, bright fall your eyes on any horizon........I love this! Though you come now, once you find this quill, ink, this fate will have passed on, to you...oooooh....nicely turned! I like this. Your works always seem to hold a secret. Some bit of truth that might be missed if the reader were to skip through it lightly. When I read your work, I search deeply between the lines to see what I have missed. It makes it hard to crit' your work effectively, but it makes for a truely interesting read. Shine on....Ellen
This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas Edward Wright On Date: 2006-11-27 11:25:58
Critiquer Rating During Critique: Unknown
Venturing out on a limb, I'll even bring a rope, and there I'll hang Or slide quietly down its hempy braid, or tie two ends and swing. I have found your writing to be more focused. And therefore more readable, pleasurable. Perhaps I am missing the middle chapters, The part where the boat sank and all the survivors died. And this is the denouement, with the pretty music, And the sheet in the pew with the pretty printing. Or not. TEW
This Poem was Critiqued By: marilyn terwilleger On Date: 2006-11-22 16:33:47
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.92857
Hi Mark...this is a superb poem and one that I cannot stop reading. Yesterday I tried to analyze it but gave up as that seemed to make it trivial...no...this poem is not to be torn apart nor is the reason you wrote it. It is, instead, to be savored like an old wine that just continues to get better the longer it is left as is. You said you are "less inclined" to write but not less inspired. That can't be, you know. Writing is what and who you are and to turn your back on that would be the largest sin of all...nothing that you have done or will do could compare. I have tried to establish the lines or the phrase that inspires me the most but I cannot for to pick one above the other would be a sin, as well. I can feel the pathos and the dolefullness of it all and your words seem to strike a chord in me that I don't quite understand but then that is the beauty of it...is it not? So don't put down your quill and pen nor pass it on...it belongs to you and you alone. They become your gift, that quill and pen, like an extention of your mind. Lotsa....Mazza
This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-11-22 11:25:45
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
The brevity of life holds little meaning for those that have not come to the awareness of what there is to accomplish in it, fully. The bitter- sweetness of growth. Attaining that is not the end of it...or doesn't have to be. Each day can be a new awakening to discovery, somehow a mimicry, of sorts of rebirth. Just yesterday I observed a blue jay mocking crows, something I had only seen magpies doing (and of course, parrots.) Like in a Hugo novel, even the imprisoned can draw on powers of mind and observation to sustain values to continuing life. It is only the self-absorbed, those always looking for others to entertain them, that complain of being bored and hang life on one big coat hook. Mark, sometime ago I singled you out for success as a poet. In this poem is just another example of why I did so. I only point this out to you, and you SPECIFICALLY because one day I know you will realize being else than a poet for you is atrocious misdirection. I can't pound the faith in you that you have what it takes to realize recognition as an accomplished poet, but I would if I could. So much for that. Suffice it to say, here is the gem I draw from this one poem that so many times has its equal in other poems you write...for which I am want to prod you in the ass as I have done here. "your footsteps hit/the corridor/like an interrogation". Poetry, if it is anything is the finding of new things to say or of saying old things in new ways that make people less likely to miss understandings they otherwise leap about and over in the way they come to terms with the mundane. This imagery makes them ask, "how is this possible" and they find some steps they've missed in the backtrack. It's beauty is another thing and, yes, it has that too. I'll spare you redundancy. Put the little book together, thick head! JCH
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