James C. Horak's E-Mail Address: jchorak7441@sbcglobal.net

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Poem Title	Poet Name	Critique Given by James C. Horak	Critique Date
My Voting Record-January	Dellena Rovito	I was taken by Duane's concept in Standstill Minutes too. Kind of felt cheated he didn't progress the poem just a little more. Mark's Whitman poem was an easy choice. He shows a love and penetration of the poet. I would be a lot more impressed with Patton's work if he would universalize his message (or at least present a message more.) Arnie was something of a rustic poet similar to Patton and once he began doing this, began winning. I'd like to see him write an anti-war poem. In fact I'd like to see us all write more of those. A thoughtful vote, Dellena, something we've all grown to expect from you. JCH	2009-02-14 08:52:07
My January Votes	Duane J Jackson	I am gratified you thought well of my poem, this one in particular, Duane. I felt it was my best offering for the month too. As for, Hamlet's Mill, Mark gave us three hard to choose between. Dellena's however was an easy choice and I can see you were touched as well by Gerard's wonderful expressions. I hope you're going to give us some this month. JCH	2009-02-14 08:41:23
Summer evening	Mark Andrew Hislop	I had ended a movie review I wrote comparing two films with this passage, "The mind contains its own perfection, perhaps even its own universe. How one might resolve the loose threads remorse leaves tangled around our memories, and how we might sort them out into resolutions more remedial to our health, even that in preparation for death, just might be more encompassing than readily imagined." Only written a scant few days ago, this seems an interesting coincidence, don't you think? Yes, and your summer is my winter. And hope you've returned for good. Your friends have missed you, even with your tender sensibilities all aflamed. JCH	2009-02-07 13:45:24
Happily Missing Potential	Mick Fraser	Rich thoughts in highly striking expression, Mr. Fraser. Almost Elizabethan. Break these complete sentences up into imagery less astute to purpose so that what is FELT becomes just a tantamount to such purpose as what is understood more intellectually. Give room for the reader's mind to roam. Therein is gel by which our empathetic commonality obtains common bond. In the moment the sparrow catches the soul, so the fleeting enjoinment of joining clarity with another. And all other communication becomes, in comparison, preached text. Obviously you yearn for more. JCH	2009-02-04 22:12:28
A Perspective	Dellena Rovito	"Domination is operation control", yes it is, and a splendid ending statement for this chopsticked-lined poem tapping to an utterly contextually proven thesis. Consensus of persepective is regarded "reality" and, like tenuous scientific theorem, reclassified as we grow from one inner shell to its next outside layer. But, almost always regarded as the "spoken word" while we have to put up with its dubious patent on truth. Perhaps, had Copernicus known how far his wonderful clarity would have been denigrated to Big Bang and String Theory, he would have just resigned to living among the mental dwarfism happiness of the Earth is Flat Society. And people could have gone on selling epi-cycle models of the solar system (complete with a 10 volume set of instructions and batteries.) Do we grow? Yes, but not very straight. JCH	2009-02-02 10:02:58
Midwinter's Dream	Dellena Rovito	That the context for the adept in history is lost after the advent of mankind adopting universally a context for law, has never been brought properly into persepective...anymore than has that of a similar presence with us since we entered the age of fission. Barriers to human survival have had teflon treatment from time to time, through the ages, by those that have ventured through our area and times expressly for the purpose of improving the chances for this experiment to succeed. Ours is but a template provided for the best circumstances that can meet the occasion. Sort of a prolonged test to see if we can be trusted into a community with technology almost any of its individuals can use to exterminate the rest. If one thinks about this, just a little, one might wonder how it could be else. If one removes the garbage religion and mind control mechanisms employ, it will be a clarity won of the inevitable. Yes, there was a Merlin. Yes, there was a Quetzechoatl. JCH	2009-02-02 08:55:55
Rachel's Marriage	Gerard A Geiger	Mr. Geiger, it's good to see you've returned. And presented us with a poem that touches what must clearly be close to your heart. You have both richness in thought and a way with obtaining internal rhyme, assonance and interesting variations on both like the way, in lines 6 and 7, "gracious" plays with "countenance". Using the four line verse, however, is not your forte, and is unnecessary. Employed as free verse this poem could soar. You might feel less constrained to direct sentences and keep to the more interesting poetic devices of which you begin. I'm injecting these points to help you add to a very special poem, a way to help make its quality more in keeping with its personal value to you. There are so many devices at your disposal to SHOW these direct statements in the vision of illusion, metaphor, euphemism, simile, and what I call parallelism. Don't just stop at the occasional simile, the occasional illusion. Elevate this whole poem to the level its theme is valued by you, giving it a texture of its own, an unforgetable one. Most of all, bring yourself more into it. Yours is a privilaged perspective, share it with us. And make that footnote pointless.	2009-01-23 16:36:49
The Tincture	Dellena Rovito	It is my privilage to be the first to critique this poem of yours, Dellena, clearly your best. One delicious with assonance and rich in imagery. Subtle rhyme is so much better than the other kind and you're beginning to do this....and well. Noble ideals, wonderful title, very very nice. Love as "Tincture", pretty grand. JCH	2009-01-23 01:32:43
My Vote for December	Dellena Rovito	Good choices. Suppose it's just flatly too embarassing for the agenda playing when we display these votes, it's a dead giveaway with what is left of the undeclared. Giving credit where it's due is not their strong suit, but they certainly don't like to be found out either. I hold very well with what MSS wrote in his critique of Duane's, Standstill Minutes. The horseshit "glowing" to get a 10, the run to get the voting strength, and then the favor to a pal's poem...always without regard to creativity, work, creative imagery or unique idea; was too true all over online poetry sites. Now we are really moving to appreciate style, individuality, and novel attributes where they WERE NEVER given credit before. No one was asked to leave (that left) and those that did, each and everyone did so, I would imagine, on the same unaccountable terms with which they resisted openness. But they had so many places to go. JCH	2009-01-20 16:45:38
My December Votes	Duane J Jackson	You bet, so do I. Discriminating selections, Duane, and well supportable. I think we're getting somewhere. I'll post my vote after the seventh, since I was first off the line to cast it. The top poems were clearly the best (so far) and that's the point I've been making all along. When new talent breezes through they now see not only some good poems but the discerning reception they get here. I've always believed that's far more attractive than members being chummy with each other. MSS creates an indepth poem of rare quality, so diverse in facets yet unified in meaning. Mary Coffman has her typical alluring sensual (but highly subtle) qualities, but turns them to a seasonal flair of wonderful imagery and poetic language. Terry, always offering cerebreal complexity polished into well controlled emotion expressed in poetic language, sustained beautifully in imagery, presents us with one of those vexations all who have known mixed feelings must have. Your revised poem is a success, too. There is an interesting style running through most of your work that's one day going to have a flavor of its own. It makes your reader confident that you would not say something you did not only mean, but had not felt. Tony is a thoughtful poet and critic and he has faith in his intelligence. Everything he writes bears close reading. At any time he's liable to win first place. Dellena is a little warrior, full of spunk she's found intersting ways to share in her poetry. It has improved, not just in style and form, but in power. Claire loves poetry and gives her reactions to ours openly, honestly and with an absence of guile so refreshing you want to kiss her cheek. Rene has image making ability and a writer's bent, and she loves the success of others. Soon she will have her own. Mark my words. There are many others that have come and gone I can say and justify glowing comments about. Many to be missed. Whatever their reasoning, no one was turned away that I can recall. If we are to become the ideal, masters of words, words should never become instruments of separation with and between us. Diversity and tolerance are the proudest hopes for the future of our world and poets, in their finest task, are the vanguards for this message. Some have even given their lives representing it. It is a New Year. I wish all peace and love in it. JCH	2009-01-02 10:11:52
Best of Friends	Rene L Bennett	As there is in our whole approach to life dichotomy, i.e., love/hate, life/death, awake/asleep, right/wrong, day/night, subconscious/conscious, ad infinitum, there is the sense of what we portray of ourselves in writing and in what we relax to in more personal contact. From both sides, from time to time, can be stirred yearnings for the more intimate contact that can come, ironically from one side to the other. What either side resists sharing with the other. Like an actor that will not bring the personal upon his stage of art. The greatest painters use a code, even in self-portraits, while the writer creates a fictional character only later to be interpreted as an autobiographical proxy...and then, amid the usual controversy. In your poem you reveal this longing to relax one side into the other, as if you would cross the stage into the audience, and into emotions more immediately returned. Under the great man theory of history, the great man is motivated by a desire to be loved. To become almost unrejectable. Elements of this lie in us all. They lie in the artist/writer as a form of longing to express privilaged communication that reaches all universally. Sublimated at best, as an attempt for all to win common ground and end such evils as war, it really is an impulse to become, again, simply, unrejectable. If either purpose is served, however, so is the other inevitably. These understandings establish the more universal meanings in your use of "you" and in your intentions to be more broadly understood. And in the ideal, Best of Friends, hangs still notice of the unreachable wholly spared the "mask" and where, perhaps these sides might truly converge. Would that you could...and you might, but with risk. JCH	2008-12-31 14:22:17
i held my breath to hear	Mary J Coffman	Ahhh, Mary, you've a fan for sure! Magic dots the landscape and your perception of it misses none. You have the professional polish as well, and a sense of sensory illusion a child might have on Christmas Eve. The delicacy you exhibit here is always typical to your work and adds to it the interest we have to hear someone speaking low. My favorite line is, "crystal white silence/chases closely behind". It is the winter stillness those ill-humored find deafening, while those with untroubled thoughts find respite from crowding (especially from those so ill-humored.) More beautiful lines in closing, "icy stars/fall quiet on my tongue...and I breathe", that so suffice the opening, "as December/hymns her chorus". An ambitious start that even got better. So good to have you back. Merry Christmas. JCH	2008-12-23 17:49:22
Our Voting for Poems, Please Help..	Rene L Bennett	Happy to oblige, Rene. Some of the controls in the voting procedures don't always work the way they're supposed to so it's adviseable to wait until just before the end of the voting period and do everything at once. Decide what poem you like best. When you bring it up there is a link at the top of the page that says, "add to voting list". Hitting that link places the poem in the first position on your list. Do the same with the second, third, and so forth. When I've tried to change the postion of poems I have already placed there, things have gone wrong several times. When you feel comfortable with your choices (try to vote on at least 7, preferably 10,) hit the "cast your vote now" button and that's it. If you would like to account for your choices and further discuss them, you can submit your vote either here or on the forum (if your credits are running short.) If you need credits, for whatever reason, I've some to offer. Hope I've been of assistance, JCH	2008-12-20 11:13:23
Wind Chimes	Dellena Rovito	Goodness will prevail. My dear, you find such interesting sound play with your rhyme, i.e., "slightly so lightly tinkles"...almost onomatopoetic. Then the glowing with meaninging line, "Memory resides within the personal tones of faith". In itself a pleasing tone of thought. A poem superlative to its theme and sweet in its message, the nicest appropriation to Christmas I've so far found. Merry Christmas. JCH	2008-12-19 13:01:51
My November Vote	Duane J Jackson	Commendable discernment in selecting, Duane, showing you made effort to be both fair and accountable. Though some have no liking for being held to account, it's lacking is what makes all the other poetry sites I've explored fail to progress poets. Leading right back to what Chris created this site to avoid (or so he says,) another clone of poetry.com. Now poets who are interestingly different and adopting their own style have a stage that appreciates them. We can experiment and know we will not be disgarded. But most of all, we can honestly discuss and bear the brunt of probing criticism without taking offense. For opinions untested are unearning. In any pursuit. JCH	2008-12-16 07:40:48
The Comings and Goings	Dellena Rovito	The short lines cadence well, like to a beat of the drum signifying a "progress" more mindless than advised or wise. Productive labor certainly does not "putrify" in weariness...but what trades for mankind's presence here certainly has. Indeed "Courage is a testing doctrine", especially where pedantry and inflated esteem bridge with corruption...want a senate seat, how about a handout for producing inferior cars and not policing dealers to back warranties? Well, when we've come to the reduction only telling the truth gets one in trouble...well, the liars migrate north in winter and south in summer. That much is nice. Enjoyed your poem, my dear...brought out my sardonic humor side. JCH	2008-12-12 19:29:57
My October Vote	Dellena Rovito	Dellena, thank you for the kind support. You choices show effort went into making them and fairness. That doubles their value and is every bit what worthiness is about. To have seen this lacking so much in the past really irked me but mostly it undermined everyone here that had the slightest notion of our improving our work to becoming worthy of the readership we might attract. JCH	2008-12-02 08:17:33
My Birthday Wish	Rene L Bennett	Although, Rene, this is full of poetic "meat" for many prospective poems (which I would very much like to read) it is not of a style poetry commonly assumes by definition. But did I enjoy it? Yes. Did I take in some insights and illusions equally uncommon to the genre of poetry? Yes. In this way, such a work challenges definitions, mindsets and even innate values. And, personally, I muchly prefer this to many of the "polished" poems that have won, over the years, the monthly contest here at TPL. However, for a broader audience and an appeal to the more usual of the poetry afficionado I would suggest revision. No direct statements, you don't need them. Don't worry about such things as continuity, context and punctuation. Employ a certain amount of indistinctness and leave the rest for the reader to sublimate meaning. Thus all the richness you offer becomes theirs. And you will have a fine poem on anyone's standard. JCH	2008-11-25 09:53:33
P O P C O R N	Dellena Rovito	A poem of simile yet to the extent some parallelism is engaged. Well explained by sharing an insight into how one perceives their Muse. Where inspiration, like a dreamscape, is to be taken at its moment like a dream at waking. (Now you have me doing it.) Sometimes we are bringing inspiration to our intellect by our emotion. But a little later that emotion might decline and the intellect has its own transitory way of dispensing value. The comparison with POPCORN thus carries very well and the parallels you draw as simile and euphemism poetic reenforcements. In the first verse, an almost study of popping describes your own sharing of insight into how, like the mystifying nature that corn can pop, the epiphany of idea brings us to pen a poem...equally mystifying, sometimes explosively, then, "Turning soft and pliable" as we sort it out. The final line, "Tenderness is equal to its quality" recalls the line in Shakespeare's, Julius Caesar, where Marcus Antony repines the loss of Caesar to the mob about "the quality of mercy". Or of another famous line of taking a thing at its very start. And, yes, all things are not equal. Well said. JCH	2008-11-13 08:48:14
My October Votes	Duane J Jackson	Duane, thank you for your kindness and generosity shown my poem. I'm deeply gratified you, as well, took a close look at Mark's exceptional, On the Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, and came to the same regard for it as have I. It is through such openness we grow, as we learn to discuss and debate our choices and tastes, refining them as we work through our interactions instead of the empty approbations people throw out for whatever reasons. We will see different things in poems and accord them differing values, that's taste. But glaring flaws are not, neither are uninspired attempts to meet meter count and ryhme patterns. Poetry today should be about discovery, astute news ways of saying things that spark more clarity to the otherwise poorly understood, imagery that comes of originality and extends like a portal to something more vast than the words themselves. This is what strikes upon the reader's mind and soul something to be carried over from the reading to apply elsewhere. Frost did that superbly. And when it's done by you and others, it can sparkle just as well. These are the things for which to strive, not meaningless slaps on the back. JCH	2008-11-08 10:34:20
Days of Winter	Dellena Rovito	Yes, I like that a lot better, Dellena. Traditions sometimes die hard, especially when so many men and women of letters have written well in structured verse. But the scene has changed and formalism loses many today who are more inclined towards electronic media. There the imagery has such visual delivery the poet can only compete with startling imagery hardly accomplishable in formal verse. More than ever poetry without power strikes readers as tepid. Add formal structure and it seems stilted, almost comic. JCH	2008-10-15 02:53:24
Prism	DeniMari Z.	This could be a companion poem to my last, Between Lines. So much betrays us; it is the way of this plodding life that its ironies are almost the sole novelties of...how creatively we are betrayed. Would we count on anything..."As one hour changes;/Everything in sight." The extended imagery played in "Silver clear emotions stop bold puzzled notions,/ That smack orange moons over white feathers and/Fair friends bright light, softly floating/Over dusk waking up to midnight(')s delight." represents appreciation for the continual barrage of extra-sensory experience life hands us instead of order. Fair weather friends leaps out of the barrage from the admixture of wording as does the chronological anomaly of "dusk" at "midnight(')s delight". The sense we try to make of the non-sensical is our human condition and this is a treatment of its thankless task. Those that have "been there" will have no problem with these complexities. A few more bumps and grinds and neither will the others. Guess we've become mutual supporters. JCH	2008-10-09 12:15:03
My September Vote	Dellena Rovito	Indeed, why not? I am delighted you've seen fit to follow suit in revealing your vote, my dear. No one, were they of candor and not working under a rock, should object to doing so. Personally, I've always felt people should reflect their actions or be held to suspicion in declining to do so, the problem we now face somewhat magnified in government. JCH	2008-10-08 09:16:35
The Fallen	Mark Andrew Hislop	MAH, you have a way with meter and an ear for the many aspects rhyme can take with it. Few poems I've read online match this one's agreement with both. As a reader searches for the meaning behind the written word, contrivance is of little benefit to either that pursuit or to any appreciation of the craft...inspite of all those shrieking otherwise. Only extra-sensory elements striking a poet on occasion(the Muse)afford us mere mortals any such closer aspiration with the exalted. Perhaps the extra push of reverence, personal beliefs, ragged experience in life... or some just plain intense sense of empathy produce this. Perhaps. "To be heir to sharp awareness"; the whole of the verse, "the savage heart, the unarising peace./You did not find a cure for these not/in coke, not in mind-arranging smoke", are so inspired. Elegant even more for NOT being in competition with your other lines, though by no means are those others not of poetic quality. Personally, I don't like the view that crafting words together is the poet's lot. Eventually things come to the studious of their own and such "agreements" with meaning and how the words come about to enhance them are more natural than this describes. Sometimes there are those born as prodigy, although we haven't seen this in a poet in quite some time. Maybe the potential ones are being caught up in something else before finding such genius in themselves...video games, computer virus creation...who knows? It might even be in you. Now that you're free to explore for it more so... Just don't latch on to another crutch-to-bear for the mundane before you have a chance to find out.	2008-09-24 09:40:16
Images	Thomas H. Smihula	Well, Thomas, I would have abstracted the metaphor a little more, someone is going to confine it to interior decorating scheme. "Adoring" the wall, however, is a bit much. Can we be content with adorning it? Were we to look at life as a work in progress, to feel we do indeed perform on its canvas, our role might seem very much like this. At what point do we know, "How many pieces are left?" and that we've finished. Too, what have we left to, "influence those that have ventured in?" Our mortal claim to immortality. "Another piece of cryptic display", perhaps the values yet undetermined, the perplexity unresolved. In preparing the stage of life upon which all the world are players, to paraphrase the Bard, you've dropped cues: backdrop and setting. The new set of answers with each new question or "subset"...variations on a theme, perhaps even the ripening of wisdom with new considerations of the old. "Can a puzzle lead to a more dispensible one?" The testing of perfection and challenge to complacency. But in the end it is not important to know if one has truely sought. Unless, of course, one regards death, "completion". Focus, the reader has too many options, and you will have the direction of a good poem. JCH	2008-09-23 23:38:25
Debugging	Mark Andrew Hislop	A poem of indefinite aloofness, allowing its reader vast license. Something poets do on the fringe, coming to terms with either the Muse or those around them that interfere. Showing you believe in not just the soul but that cognizance/inspiration and perchance that "odd robot" even, are its components. Treasured lines from Hopkins that pull the teeth from dispair and raise concerns beyond the mundane in appreciation that nothing in nature need be thought devastating. Your poem does those lines service. "Debugging", or just cleaning out the attic? (Careful with your answer.) JCH	2008-09-21 23:45:58
Economics	Mark Andrew Hislop	Damn, it's good to see you're still clinging to the land of the living. Slightly put out, however, since you've rebuffed two of your friend's continued efforts to determine that. Cheerfully forgiven anyhoo...(sorry, it's the Canadians that do that, isn't it?) Yes, yes, the evaluation of even thought by its marketable asset. Must be novel...and inoffensive. Just like a politician running for office. No one's observed a bottom line in this culture (including Aussieville)that didn't fall within sound byte and/or dollars and cents since the Boston Tea Party. Truth?! Economic truth?!! Why that's Marxist. You want to get us all in trouble? "Unclothed by strategy"... my favorite line. That state requires close friendship and a nip or two of 90 proof. Not enough people can count passed $50 million, much less $50 trillion. Can't add up that translates to tough meat and no college for the kids. History has proven until they're toting around all the currency they can carry in a wheelbarrow just to buy a loaf of bread, it's all still cheery (you Aussies say that too, don't you?) Sons and daughters sent to the Iraq meatgrinder...you think these dolts don't deserve some retribution? It's just too bad the damage isn't confined to them. How's that for some truth that won't make us a nickle?...but it's pure...like Aussie snow. Damn, damn, damn...If I hadn't been banned from the forum you'd be starring in a Briar Patch episode right now. JCH	2008-09-21 23:31:02
Oppenheimer's Lament	Gene Dixon	I have solemnly insisted over and over again that ANYTHING placed into the hands of the military/industrial complex and its toady "fetch" lap dog politicians would be tested no matter what it might encompass...even sub-atomic matter cascade. With Dr. Oppenheimer it was that the line had to be drawn early on before it came to a neutron bomb, before it came to even the time distorting aspects of an H-Bomb. In the movie, The Fountain, the view of punishing flesh and taking life for the greater good of the soul is paralleled with that of this period's (The Inquistion) contemporary, Aztec and Mayan human sacrifice. Sublimated even further, death becomes expressed as awe...the only awe. The supreme instrument of madness, not in the hands of serial killers, but in the hands of something much worse, those that have traded volition for consensus, conscience for power. A slight misspelling, "grom" for grow. I'll give you a submission credit to change it...just give me your user login name. "Although there's only ashes left to taste"... I enjoy Biblical references when so subtle. Gifted irony in "bloom" with "mad flowers" and in the meal aspect of "feast". Extremely well metered lines and rhyme scheme in the last two lines. Making the last as summation doubles their significance to the rest and is what the frame you've built builds the expectation. In a sane world to look upon such a spectacle would be to weep. JCH	2008-09-15 18:20:37
Venting Outloud	DeniMari Z.	Well, my dear, let's see what we can do here...got my check list out (going to make a rudimentary examination over your protests.) 1) You have something to say POIGNATELY Check 2) Refreshingly honest and penetrating Check 3) True to your feelings Check 4) Interestingly phrased Check 5) Universal interest Check 6) Strikes a chord with all suffering lossCheck Works into my esteem, just don't take it to a shrink. Ran out of gold stars. Would you settle for a candy kiss? JCH	2008-09-14 02:35:06
The Promise of Sun	Dellena Rovito	Aaaah, yes, this is so much better to my ear! The last line has a complex meaning that could very well have some riddle. That's more of a consideration now that the syntax is more in agreement with a potential elevation of meaning. It is very pleasing to me to see your poems improving and, as you can see, others are taking notice as well. JCH	2008-09-12 16:54:08
I'm Weary	marilyn terwilleger	Marilyn, it is my pleasure to see you break with the purely sensory poem and its cultural adoption by too many of the poets of today who choose a form of artistic timidity in the face of a society coming apart at the seams. Your abilities with poetic language and image-making I've always felt could serve well the more intense examination of a world at war and where selective genocide still looms in the face of a media taken over by monoplistic media czars of the Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch bent. Somewhere down the food chain these monsters influence, even impose, notions of what sells and what won't in EVERY art, every craft. In this poem is our first real look at Marilyn, not a stylization, not a pretty frame something pandering notion, circumspects. You and Lora long ago had your mind made up about me. The difference being, I've yet to learn the most basics of who are you...really, not the combating front you feel appropriate to represent, but what you are without "attack mode", without the whining about how things were. They weren't really that grand to my impressions, nor that of many that came and went and confided to me sometimes why. I think you would be edified, just as me, to finish that one poem whose perfection is why any dedicated poet continues. In that respect I assure you our directions merge more than you may wish to believe. This being the case, Marilyn, the success won't have to be from recognition of others, just one's self. Tell me if the thorn's still there. JCH	2008-09-12 11:29:43
Calla Cavatina	Mary J Coffman	Mary, sometimes an image can be incoherent, in this case your very first one. So important to your poem because it is your very first one. We are captivated by the breadth of, "eyes swallow the sky" but "like sapphire wine" fails to serve to extend the beginning of a promising illusion with coherence. Although we can extend the allowance you mean the sky and its clouds, the subject of an extended compound sentence is the transitive, "eyes". Your reader shouldn't have to make such leaps. Everything that follows splendidly works, stepping out even more glaringly this critical error. One I implore you to fix so that I may far more deservedly espy this poems elegant potential, anal retentive that I am. JCH	2008-09-02 04:37:35
Performing Art	Dellena Rovito	Moliere wrote his plays around truth versus pretense (night versus day, in the case of your poem) and how consolidated dissembling had become to the social graces, that of women the most, as shown in his foremost achievement, La Tartuffe (The Women.) Though in places something of a burlesque, very very biting. I can't see this applying what-so-ever to you but...well, some others.... So I look more deeply into your meanings and find meanings and metaphors representing them of "night" and "day". Your line, "Evenings the curtain of what's behind" is the key to where the rest of the poem finds essence. People, yourself as well, prepare to represent more their actual "thoughtful contemplation" at eventide while assuming Moliere's mask at day. An interesting inversion of the way most people see it, people accustomed to chasing theirs or someone else's tail at night, instead of thought and its respite from the rat race of the day. So, yes, your poem is for those not jerked from one social feed trough to another but whose leisure time is kept "leisure". Even in the way love is taken, solemn sensual repose. Not even the same thing for those chasing day into night, night into day. I don't like the line, "Night holds much to actualize" primarily because "actualize" is one of those words used in psycho-therapy and that's like putting ketsup on baked Alaska. But I'll endure it for the "meat" of your poem...however, without the thorazine. Only for you. JCH	2008-08-25 23:48:42
When The Women Came Out To Dance	Gene Dixon	That you elect a very interesting irregularity to refrain, "when the women came out to dance" offers your poem highly more originality. On other levels this works well too. From your poem on the Tree of Life, the grasp of that duality in women that is marked by the multi-level way they find release (need I mention the sensual?)where men are more singular, reflects back on the reality of difference between the two sexes. The simile, "Like they were the sultan's daughters" might carry better were it, of the sultan's harem, where among that group were more interesting and diverse bonds formed, representing far better the complexity of interworkings between women culminating in such societal mechanisms as your, "dance". The immediate image evoked by your title, after all, is what women do when the men are away (reenforced by the last two lines of the second verse.) A gifted poem lends only subtle focus to mechanics, ready to abandon them entirely when they impede what is sought to be done. In doing so they find truer expression than mere convalution and contrivance. A song in itself. Such an achievement is acquired when you find, in the last and my most favorite verse, a ryhme that filters through the unconscious-becoming-conscious (somewhat like a leaf finds the ground) in the way "laugh" strikes subtle chord with "dance". The best of your three poems. JCH	2008-08-14 08:55:50
The Woman in the Garden	Gene Dixon	Poignance won of simplicity, an elegance all its own. Too many times challenge overcompensates; here it derives its strength from cool understatement. And interesting lines in, "Who knew that justice/flowed to every branch", one that reflects a depth to the lines before in creating an image sustaining unto the Tree of Life that goes vastly beyond purely Christian reference. The following verse attests the feminine mystique women retain in aloofness to all men but in subtle undertone well advised (again in "coolness") and in "sibilance" with "serpent". Again, much deeper into the past than could be the purely Christian frame of reference, closer to that of a belief system viewing women far differently than men. So that instead of "them" it is only "him" that shouldn' be cast out. Yes, but much more explicacion de text and I could not pronounce agreement without the outcries attendant to penetrating truth. So I discreetly stop and leave the women to, "...come and go/Talking of Michelangelo". ..."The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot Or more simply put inconsequence only slightly sublimated by cunning. Yes. In a way I wish we didn't have to share this with others. JCH	2008-08-13 22:36:22
The Crescent, The Star and The Cross	Gene Dixon	Welcome, Mr. Dixon, as well your spendid poem, one whose moral core fills a void so lacking in poetry focused purely on excursions within first person realms. That so many religions posture, at variance to the most basic of all human teaching, an imposition of intolerance and militancy, becomes apparent to any student of history. So much so, that it is only the most ignorant and callous that drag references to religious institutions fostering them ideally in song and verse. Why it is I find your poem such a refreshing exception. All of which you say here, all of which you valiantly express. Everyday, they lay about..."mindless minions subjects of the sword." Sending sons and now daughters as if they went to save anything more than the face of avarice and lust that despises needful change. Thank God, man, finally a good anti-war poem. JCH	2008-08-13 13:47:47
The nervous question	James Edward Schanne	Mr. Schanne, have you been reading James Joyce? Two ways of viewing your poem exist, one not gracious to you, the other abundantly so. Not crafted well, almost every line depends on enjambement to hold together with the next almost like you are cascading meanings to all converge at one point (as in Joyce's, stream of consciousness.) In the context of craftmanship alone that would be taking poetic license too far in depending upon device. When you do this with a rhyme scheme, it causes the less penetrating reader to feel things a bit too contrived... at least until they reap benefit from your splendid image-making. So successful are you in that view that device is forgiven and the visions you conjure of with the "indefinite" of the dance, juxtaposition of canvas with mirror (gifted) and choice of terms in phrases ( I am quite taken with "brushed doodles")progresses your reader to pleasure. Your last lines, "roaring in your throat yet it whispers out/once again you try this time in a shot" exhibits a profound ability with poetic language. So one ends up readjusting a bit to admit, rules well broken. JCH	2008-08-05 09:23:51
Sculptured	Thomas H. Smihula	That we permit dichotomy to enter so much of life's aspects, and to draw from that an either/or model has always been perplexing to me. So I, for one, can't appreciate that the intellectual might in any way diminish the emotional. But you are quite valid in employing that consideration...literature is full of such motive force. It is behind the tragedy of Othello, it is the reduction of King Lear. Age has brought me all the wonders attached to appreciating the "sculpting" observed upon the Childe Herald or the Father of the Man. Children have been for quite some time now my greatest interest. Perhaps it is a communal trait but I look upon them as all our repsonsibility. All of them are equally precious. But I did not always know how much. You poem is a travel through the process of reaching that understanding. Welcome to age's wisdom. JCH	2008-07-22 19:24:03
Days of grey...	Lynda G Smith	Finally someone that utilizes enjambement with a purpose, AND does so well...improving both meter and rhyme scheme. Not that your poem really requires it to succeed, your internal rhyme is equally resplendent. I'm especially drawn to "the spoils/of cold....the heated pot/That boils..." You've a very interesting grasp of Middle English, your use of "toddy on the wind" goes well with the inversion, "in minute fragment fare". The superb novelty of finding the rhyme of "wind" with "within" is another delicate quality your poem has so many of already. With such subtlety I might suggest you find a more poetic adjective than "flocculent". Somehow it seems out of tone with all else. But a beautiful poem all the same. JCH	2008-07-21 15:06:51
In Summary	Dellena Rovito	A mature and highly poignant poem, Dellena, clearly your best. I hesitate to praise it, knowing the spite that reigns here abouts. The lines have an almost tactile interworking with internal rhyme and meter count. Very effective when adding to meaning as do yours. The short ending lines in the last three verses are effective as well. When this is done the emphasis falls back on what lies before in the same way would a refrain. The last verse is my favorite and one that carries the success of the poem to a fine finale'. I won't hesitate to vote for this wonderful poem. JCH	2008-07-19 23:16:46
Surges	Dellena Rovito	If you meant, "I soar (high) through the (sky)" then this is a suggested correction. If you did not, but chose an interesting reflection, pardon my presumption. Still this is a successful poem well in tune with the physical forces interchangingly working tide/wind/ imagination. Yes, imagination is the ultimate carry of it all... well appreciated by your poem. JCH	2008-07-19 23:08:44
The Beauty Of Existence	Dellena Rovito	In the scheme of the adepts lies a devout belief that what is constructed perfectly in the mind, can come to manifest in the physical form. Likewise the most perfected adept holds all reality as thought. Has the world lost its adepts? The real ones? Or do they wait upon something, quiet to teach...no ear turned their way? Look around you, my dear, who listens? For your poem is not fanciful with these observances in mind. JCH	2008-07-19 22:59:23
Blood Melts Like Ice	DeniMari Z.	My dear, I see growth here. And it couldn't come to a more deserving person. Family, a concept we like to think about in terms of ideal...but seldom do ideals actually have anything to do with the fact. No one will take greater license with your privacy than relatives; they will do things to you they wouldn't dare to others out of fear of the consequence. And they will be the last to give you credit...almost always tending to be more in competition than well-wishing. Yep, my dear, I love your jab at the old and muchly overrated adage, "blood is thicker than water". So is shit. Let's go follow some windy shoreline now and do a little beachcombing. JCH	2008-07-08 14:47:29
Understanding	Thomas H. Smihula	In observance of your request, I'll offer only a remark or two...simply as one that has reached similar adjuncts in life. Thomas, the course of life is only a part truely ours. The few that can maintain any direction at all are usually those devoted to profession and then, only on the basis of their work. Home, hearth, happenstance...all of that can go bye-bye at the drop of a hat...and usually someone else's hat. If you are a truth-seeker, all this is peripheral. The insulation that drive gives is its own reward. Although the sacrifice made to intimacy with others is extreme, you are saved a good deal of the devastation when they let you down. And you could be a truth-seeker...I really do believe. JCH	2008-07-08 14:39:01
Elegy	Mark Andrew Hislop	The funeral dirge is something of a strange calling foreboding to all our ultimate paths. Your poem, mindful of this, sounds, like the tolling bells in Hemmingway's novel, the grave senses of loss life yields to us all. In Mexico, among the Mayan Indian villages, are festivals to celebrate the dead. That celebration is the right word, offers another, less odious side to passing. Were we to accept belief can manifest, even our intellectual side might take solace in the hope. And bitterness becomes but folly. JCH	2008-07-01 00:06:58
Rightness	Dellena Rovito	Yes, then there are those that hide behind nicety, paying all manner of lip service to what in the end amounts to nothing. Then the first time tested, become snarling beasts, affronted by the slightest penetrating truth or uncompromising insight. The kindness of which you speak is not lost upon those who delve deeper than this aggrandizement of traded back slapping. Those that press to see what lies deeper, deeper than the saccharine sweetness of forced insincerity. To find something true that can lead somewhere besides an aside in a play by Moliere. Poetry should facilitate such endeavor, not pander to masks and manners. And this is what makes your treatise poetry. JCH	2008-06-29 21:53:01
Old Folks	Kenneth R. Patton	Perhaps your, "optimistic moments" are your more enlightened as well. The poem, I think, benefits from your restraint to employ more rigid stanzaic structure and rhyme. Such abidance to "earth-bound" traditions would have detracted from its sweeping final statement, "There's a Universe out there". The progression building in the first three verses is reminiscent of A. E. Housman's, A Shropshire Lad in that it repeats a theme from verse to verse and amplifies awareness to it. The lines, "I'm beginning to realize/how little my body/has to do with me" are my favorite and inspired are they. Quite possibly my favorite of your poems and a very good one at that. JCH	2008-05-27 09:24:41
Double Edged	Dellena Rovito	Our expectation is ultimately what is our substance. It is the mark of our confinement as well as the extent of our expansion. That some can lose, due to intractability, the ability for growth by closing themselves off to others, can never be sustaining to growth. For them life is but one long droning redundance, beating the drum as if it were the heads of those they perceive ignoble. If we see personal relationships in this light (even collective ones like in the case of TPL) we come away with successes, though perhaps momentary or transient. Yet still noteworthy. Instances where we have reached others or they have reached us. You and I, Dellena, have had this. And we have shared the privilage of watching what is both the worst and best in some others that have either knowingly or witlessly displayed themselves for us on a stage set by confrontation. This is the way we have of taking measure of men, of women, of poets. And what separates the potential to be remarkable from just another poetry.com. For poetry, like all forms of expression, has no finer purpose than to deliver us more from the mundane and stifling social lie and religious myth rather than help settle us more into it. In the midst of confronting this, anyone today on almost all online forums (including those of non-poetry context) will be villified. An idiot threatens you and then accuses you of doing a tiny bit of what he shamelessly indulges every time he pops up here, in abundance. And you and one other (MAH) stand your ground in his snake face. While the others take that, "well, I just don't know" stance. Or worse. When I come away from this it will be with the memories of you and MAH as remarkable. Proven so. And with the makings of poets, the substance of poets. As for many of the rest: Yeah, what is your problem with poetry.com? It sure isn't because you don't belong there. JCH	2008-05-19 09:17:11
come back	Regis L Chapman	Regis, it is indeed a shame people have left. But each and everyone had done so of their own volition. Prior, there were many that came and went leaving but one or two poems behind they had offered. Vastly more than had not. Some whose poems were promising. And some who did mention quietly to one or two of us why they had been "turned off" TPL. Developing anything creative into success is not for the faint-hearted. Those that believe hard work and honesty with one's own failings don't play larger parts in doing so than, "I'll show you" gifts from the gods, are simply beyond help. These, however, become easily controlled by the entrenched if given flattery and made nice with for the most superficial kind of ego edification. Both invariably become opposed to anyone testing that superficialty by comparison with standard or reference to biographical parallels with the lives of great poets established as such. They need and maintain ignorance as a way of protecting self-esteem. I made a challenge to one such over an empty critique she made to a shopping list of self-indulged self-pity. And we lost some "poets" and had several long threads of nastiness over it. But, Regis, we can either stand up to the truth and deal with it or we can be just another child's, show and tell stage. Where, when all is said and done, a critique comes to mean absolutely nothing. And the critique given a shopping list and something you might labor over, has no discernible distinction at all. Is that what you want? JCH	2008-05-14 11:32:14
A Toast	Michael Bird	"Bridge of Tears", whether the place where you took happiness with a loved one or last parted with them (the grave) certainly can bring to bear upon memory unmerciful rawness. Though resigned to any passing, even that of a broken bond, remorseful yearnings may linger. Finality becomes an ultimate unforgiving. It is the irony that "merciful memory", losing in intensity becomes a form of growth. "May I never pass this way again" acknowledges this. The parting tribute of a "toast" thus comes to represent both last farewell and the growth to be placed more whole on finding your new path and resolve to "...never pass this way again." Have your new day in health and good fortune where you do far more honor to memory than to languish in its darker side. A complicated issue well and sensitively dealt with...and poetically. My regards, JCH	2008-05-11 13:26:15
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