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
From The Ground Up	Dellena Rovito	Would that we all be of the same purpose, striving to reach something more than what we were some moments ago. Looking not at life as some Christmas tree, some brass ring to take and win...but to fix upon growing effort, wholly focused on our reach long enough to obtain it. Our objective could require no greater clarity, no more elucidation than just that. For when we achieve one thing perfectly we have that model to apply to the rest of life...instead of becoming just another monument to growth, we could become something for which there is no precedent. And then truely, "Alive to all that existence fufills". For are we not all some seed to greater expectation? A poem, Dellena, that sets off thought. What's better than that? JCH	2007-04-30 22:31:06
The Waterwheel’s Complaint	Kenneth R. Patton	Well, Ken, this time I'll reply here...you've paid your money, you deserve fair return. This poem is delightful, your great-grandfather was obviously influenced by the better poets of his day and this one shows the more flowing verse of the Romantics, yet retains traditions exceedingly well of rhyme scheme and meter count. The variants, such as found in stanza 8, though nothing today, would have been frowned on at the time of writing. The only thing tolerated during the mid-Victorian, in England and America, permitted the absence of heroic couplet and its inversions (something increasingly thought cumbersome to the growing pulp novel readership.) What I like so much in this poem is, as in the other, you ancestor's strong moral core throughout. Here it is to view that to dwell on complaint is to miss so often the grander scheme of things: “The sun, as it swings in the arch of the blue, The stars in their course above, Get naught, for the glorious work they do, But the gift of a Father’s love!” Indeed the waterwheel serves euphemistically to represent the state of man on earth and the loss of vision so often present, to view personal circumstance too profoundly. When the mind is upon the "groans" and toil, it has little time for else...especially the fine gift of life the water brings (and the fine gift of purpose it bestows on the water- wheel.) A good poem by any standard. JCH	2007-04-30 10:41:16
Stop Fighting	Kenneth R. Patton	More than an anti-war poem, yours confronts the combatant poise some take towards others on most all fronts: work, sports, wager and pay scale. When we do take another on the basis of any "spirituality" we do so on the value of self-worth as that pertains to perception, expectation, richness of experience. Something refined beyond the material, something that persists the vicissitudes of fortune. And something, by its very nature that precludes "fighting". The best question of all, "Why wait/Why deny until/there's no time left". Why it is the difference between "spirituality", true spirituality, and the child's idea of a heaven where it's all resolved...given something to life other than grand wait, something obtained when we recognize soul and spirit is here with us now and not just when we take Communion or attend church. Thus, "the Spirit of All". Assuredly. JCH	2007-04-29 21:02:07
While Taking Notes......	Paul R Lindenmeyer	First, Equations instead of "Equasions" and dilemmas instead of "dilemmas". Small points, to be sure...when the poem reserves a rare excellence. The title, "While Taking Notes....." is an interesting and impressive choice. One full of meaning, both astute to what so many of the shooter's victims had been doing at the time of the carnage and relevant to what we all subscribe in the face of realizing such a thing possible. Asking, "Who are we?/Why are we here?/Where are we going?"...yes, such a time is when we do most. The supreme irony of, while, "pursuing reality's ends" and pondering such equations and questions, we might end up ourselves in the most intense of all... what price life? When the question CAN conjecture, "before the lecture ends,/ or the final bell tolls...." Indeed. One hell of an ending for poem that goes vastly beyond condolence. JCH	2007-04-29 12:45:17
Broken Bird	Michael Bird	Michael, I would have left off the note. This would have been in better keeping with how broad the context applies to the reationship your images have with so many other "piles of disgard". Appreciation of your poems comes easily to anyone that has seen the fields, river bends, and piles of disgarded planes, tanks, ships...anything once proud by purpose now reduced to scrap. Not a footnote away is ourselves and the "scrap pile" we fear ourselves becoming...even to those near and dear. This somber aspect of life and your poem is always with those that must face life with mortality bearing down upon their future. The almost sentience you extrapolate to the F-16 by offering what experience it had shared with pilots, "The wind rush against your skin", "Your destiny", "the whine of your turbine", "The pulsing and throbbing...", "your beauty"...all grant this aspect to the mix. I've noticed instead of flights of imagery you sustain your poetic insights better through the selection of how you relate the context of story and blending of description into an almost dramatic core, here, that of an almost Ozymandias irony. Delightful. JCH	2007-04-29 11:41:49
Sewing	marilyn terwilleger	There are flights here, Marilyn, flights of imagery almost to the point of fancy. "I saw the moon tilt,/spill its lavender memories,/sprawl across sky's organdy lid;" are lines abounding more of elation than thoughtful reminisce. Then you decline to, "Soft cries prevail/at sun's decline./A curled moon's pallor/clutches me like a shroud." The reader cannot be helped but be drawn up by the quick turn where, "not moon's opaque lamp" bestows the favor upon the sun (as opposed to the time of the moon.) But then it is the moon that by far inspires the elevated imagery. It is a contradiction in poetics rather than sense and one that could easily be addressed in order to make the read more comprehended the first time. Despite this, the closing stanza unifies both meaning and imagery with your title and settles well upon the eupehmism you've made with "sewing" and the way one can deal with the way settings stir memory. In those respects, well done. JCH	2007-04-29 11:19:32
Cassiel	DeniMari Z.	Each suicide is a resignation to self-imposed limitation. In between that extreme and bouts of sadness and momentary depressions all have come into their lives, are mazes of ways to look at things. Challenging the values of traditions whose supportable arguments steadily decline, gives a person far more susceptibility to abnormally extended visitations of these two "demons". Through whatever medium: poetry, revisits of the past, people of inspiration ("angels", "guardians of love";) we come to find relief from such as, faintly defeated/In my meekness (a superb line working at all levels)" we can be truely "show(n)/The best of this world is yet to be". Have you thought of finishing that line with, is yet to know? The illiteration found in your line, "Weak or shaky,pale or faintly defeated" is excellent and almost keeps one looking for internal rhyme. A little more regard for meter and this poem would be a winning success. But then I'm one to talk. Enjoyed your poem immeasurably. JCH	2007-04-24 10:24:46
Trigger Man	DeniMari Z.	Assuredly. One of but other beasts among us. What sits in all pomp and circumstance creating and directing war, lying and teaching our childredn to have less and less faith in what their parents remonstrate...well, hardly "another matter". By whatever hand, equally visiting upon the innocent, our misdeeds come home. But, of course, this is not politically expedient to discuss in broader terms. So we view this aberration in purely isolated terms. But is it, and the other atrocities we've encountered here, unconnected? Regardless, your poem visits the horror and finds it ultimately senseless and hellish, which it is. I would change, "unchangingly" to unceaselessly. Perhaps just a personal preference. I don't like "tepid souls". Tepid is not a word I would apply to anything spiritual. But then again, ladies present prevents me from the words I would instinctively use for this baby monster and his dark seed bed of an administration we now live under. (Recalling Raskolnikov's rationlizing for murder in, Crime and Punishment.) JCH	2007-04-20 10:58:25
Transience	Mary J Coffman	A poem whose imagery so well reaffirms its title that it leads theme. Not an easy thing to do. There is such subtle drift towards the ending found in the line, "painting twilight on paradise". Then the statement, "as shadows slip past the sill/and you leave this world behind". Delivered so well by, "...today/you are the cloud" the reader is offered something more than simply sorrow but an eulogy of what value this person was...reflected both in the memories "that learned by heart" and "morning mist's organza embrace" by those, "delicate arms". It is a sensual recollection you share with the reader, that draws almost a portrait of what you've lost but still somewhat retain. Not death, but "Transience". Far more touching than wailing. JCH	2007-04-12 00:02:03
Autumn morning	Mark Andrew Hislop	Specificity, the ultimate enemy of all poetic is being slapped pretty hard here, wonderfully. Crisp leaves in puddles is quite a dissimilarity, a most novel poetic ambiguity that delights the senses as they forage the attic for reference. This is profoundly gifted use of poetic license, although the first two lines are the better. The disassociation of, "Water cleaves to earth." with respect to the rest of its stanza is again gifted ambiguity. Its imagery of change given as trade between, "yellow blades" and "green needles, extraordinary. Then the statement, "Water cleaves to earth", almost incantation. In the last lines, your gifted capacity for imagery (this one excelling) puts the reader back where the poem found him/her, flat in the middle of looking for reassurance that some of nature remains, "hold(ing) space safe at a blue distance". There is a conspiracy between you and your buddy to perplex the hell out of the voting this month. Did you save up all these grand poems, you two, just to do that? JCH	2007-04-11 13:09:37
Western wall	Mark Andrew Hislop	I certainly see the connection between our two recent poems, almost the same vernier dialing of frequency. I take this to be the Weeping/Wailing Wall, fully appreciating the richness (humbling) of the many separate traditions attached. "To this algebra for making vast requests", a most interesting line and one filled with perpelexity, not just complexity. The Moors invented algebra, algebra is a venture to discover unknowns through quantification. If you meant this "venture into such diverse frame of reference" (almost a thought can of worms,) damn, man, that's depth. I just reviewed one of MSS's that does something on a similar scale. You guys taking the same mind expansion juice? "some ghost/Impregnating every moment"...finally acquiring back the wonderful imagery I have grown to expect from you. Nice and simple last two lines very well placed and rhymed. Just do something about that "wedge of prayer" thing and you're cooking. JCH	2007-04-09 10:03:05
My Husband's Mother	marilyn terwilleger	There is a certain fineness to persisting relationships in time. I pray that, among so many diminishing features, will find some continuance in our cultural decline. The example you have set in this poem of this is exquisite, it is both a fine reflection on your own constancy and on your mother-in-law's own goodness. The beginning of your poem is like a capture of one of John Reade's home and hearth vignettes, a very welcome mat of sorts,inviting your reader into a world youth today may easily miss. Central here is: I never recall these things without thinking of her, or sense these things without missing her. What a metaphor/euphemism for so much! Like so much of the past your mother- in-law, defined so interestingly as "My Husband's Mother", has become a focus for sublimation. Not a 57 Chevy or a big cheeseburger on a toasted bun. Either that or you just wanted to screw with my inherent joy in telling mother-in-law jokes. JCH	2007-04-04 16:07:09
Because of Him I Can Wait Patiently	Ellen K Lewis	I want you, Ellen, to rely more on imagery to tell your story than you have statement. The man was down to earth and the rustic poem is fine for that, but even then the illustration of what he was can do so much more than the statement. I know you have the tools and I think, because the subject may be so close to you, that reverance holds you back. Please don't take offense, but let me illustrate what I might do with one of your stanzas here. He is on top of the world and he isn't looking down All of his reflections are high vivid in this moment forever He is never forgotten. In the moment since last breath attaining Eternity beyond In his wink of a life passed in enduring love By thoughts he left to us. What does this do? It streams into one train of thought without the disjoint of that train separated by the assertiveness of statement. And without denial, "he isn't looking down". And it's still a bit rustic. JCH	2007-04-04 12:17:17
The Quisling	Gene Dixon	I hear the echoes from another poem, "a coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only one." Good poems do that, reflecting back on sage thoughts and noble values...express to no time and food for thought always. Within this poem lies this quality at many levels. And yet it does not reduce to cliche', and addresses discerning detail...,"The way we die AT TIMES reveals our name."...yes, not always. The poem abounds with illiteration and assonance and line end rhyme, the last set apart by indentation from the rest. As a mechanism to "bring the reader up" expressly on what the poem is about (The Quisling) its statement is so accented. The form for the poem is well chosen. More structure would merely have impeded the poet's fine articulation and made contrivance necessary to maintain its complexity. The quality of illiteration found in the line, "That though souls sing, they seldom sound the same." is beautifully enhanced by its assonance. Perhaps your best line, this bears the marks of an accomplished poet. The entire body of the poem is selectivey disposed to its final two lines, artfully brought to crescendo, with the play between "conscious" and "conscientously" adding even more depth. Indeed a quisling possesses all characteristics of harlequin, whore and pimp (hence the building of crescendo) and this device avoids any laboring of the point. I find placing the unusual euphemism you've made of those that, "speak of love to angels and imps" in the line, "Their eyes are thin." placed on the same line with your address to the next thought's question, a slight weakness. The reader labors in his read to connect its meaning to both since it is not common. If I'm not mistaken, it's a classical construct pertaining to how the Elisabethan took squinting. If so, I suspect you suffer the same literary "taint" as do I. All in all a most exceptional poem and one I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm looking forward to any more you might submit. JCH the point.	2007-04-04 11:22:28
Light Paints The World With Color	Dellena Rovito	"Copies of the (world outside the door)" perhaps? Settle down, my dear, you typically are much more attentive to detail. Now I know I'm one to talk, but if using stanza form,conscious enough to persist the same line, near the same meter...even free verse, don't break sentences outside the stanza. It's like a dangling paragraph. Stanzas have to serve some function and that might as well be it. "colonized by energy rays turned gray" delightful...followed by, "The once familiar place is transposed"...I would like transformed better, but a great idea. And transposed isn't bad. The line,"Split shift domination of light and darkness exist" is your best line. The poem is a variable sublimation of changing light and its working magic upon our senses. Instead of just "flickering light", in keeping with the sublimation, this line captures that play. Exactly, poetic image-making well suited to theme. The last line is nicely child-like and well felt as a good ending. Can you bring yourself to shiver just by imagining? Then you're still a fresh young thing. My finger's waving in your direction....MAKE THIS RIGHT! It will be a good poem.	2007-04-03 22:26:51
Present Plan	DeniMari Z.	I'm sorry, my dear. Your poem captures exceedingly well the period between being hit and resolving the blow. Structuring the line/word as you have taken to do has a point and you make it well. In fact yours is a poem that shows the compensations mind goes through on the way home from defeats in life. And as well as that can be done without self-pity. It is almost a template for how to do it. Now let me think about his, "you can't bruise from pain". Never saw it put that way, are you sure...seems like you should...no, you're right (he said, feeling like a big baby.) Damn good line. "or the door to walk through to feel at home", excellent. Screws up my voting list though. Gotta get you in there. Good hunting for a new job. JCH	2007-04-02 17:06:53
Ricky Wants A Tractor	Ellen K Lewis	Ellen, purely as a eulogy this is successful, but a little more use of imagery would tend to universalize it more and better represent its delivery poetically. I don't think you would have any difficulty doing this since the subject evidently had qualities inspiring you. The sentiments are there and well brought without pathos. You just might in simile' broaden the reader's vision in illustration. The Man with the Hoe is an extreme example, but going more in a similar direction would add power without sublimation. JCH	2007-04-02 16:41:30
my first tanka	charles r pitts	Damn, those shark critters...I'm waiting to pop one on the nose with the butt of my diving knife. The short poem reminds me of one firm whipe of the brow, the feel of sun beginning to bask on a grateful back in winter, the moment the first touch is made on the hand of one adored. It is the "take" on something in life done so well it either revives an old experience freshly or gives us a new one. You did the former for me, Charles, and I'm not wholly happy about that. Shudder, shudder, shudder. Your first try and a successful one. JCH	2007-04-02 16:24:45
Springing	Dellena Rovito	Extremely good metric count, lines turned well, not forced, subtle assonance (foliage greens/undisciplined,) and an interesting use of poetic license with the last two lines (revere instead of reverence.) All well done and a good contrast with your other poem I just critiqued, Bauble Less. The first two lines and the last two lines are poetically the best and work well together, as a warm opening of a poem to Spring and (the last) the value of it to you. A lovely poem, Dellena. JCH	2007-03-23 18:08:21
Bauble Less	Dellena Rovito	"purity", (lies) "Beneath all covering" is, if adopted, the most feared realization of our government-gone-security-ape-s...t. any sentence can frame. "Only the intrinsic need to be must be" the statement of the wholly unembellished, an excellent end for a poem paralleling well the season with the exposure of what lies beneath "foliage dressing"...or, as Moliere' might have put it, behind, the mask. I think you might enjoy Moliere's most presented play, La Tartuffe (The Women,) Dellena. Seeing it performed well is a blast. You are stark with both imagery and line, as well your message finds appropriate. Don't let anyone tell you, "it's too preachy". We'll buy them an anvil and fasten it to them with barbed wire and off to the Atlantic Trough. That's a crash course in curing the "artsy". Enjoyed your poem. JCH	2007-03-23 17:54:44
Vestige	Mary J Coffman	How do we find "vestige" (trace evidence) of spirit/soul? Is there any other way for mankind than to see another "bleeds out onto the stage"? The image of Janis, "fiercely rocking/side to side/those long tresses swaying streamers/in a storm"...such a good way to remember her. From there on, Mary J., your poem becomes an eulogy, structured with step-down lines to end as it began, syntactically. I think, striking the quality of refrain yet without the redundance. And nothing about Janis Joplin was redundant. Are we "titillated" to play her records now? You bet. Just as her presence on stage provided "vestige" of the spiritual, so her song lasts it. Don't think I've ever really identified to any degree with performing until I read your stanza, "climax comes/as you throw your soul out/over a million fondling fingers". She gave it back, though, didn't she? JCH	2007-03-18 08:40:00
Cloud	marilyn terwilleger	A poem, Marilyn, whose meter requirements have left out some clarifying conjunctions. One on first read comes to think the "Lazy lakes" are the "pale swans of grace" (too dissimilar to be good imagery,) to wonder what lakes and not rivers are doing in valleys and if those lakes sit above heaven to provide that "Gossamer rain". Then they read it again and, if having acquired poetry reading skill, realize you've made justified demand on it. Slowly becoming, like eyes in focus after deep sleep, drawn to a stage as the curtain slowly retracts. You refer to "Little white cloud" and Cloud is your title. It might help, without hurting meter, if you render, therefore, pale swan of grace instead of "pale swans of grace". At least it would have helped my first read...a lot. Grand imagery and excellent use of structure. JCH	2007-03-17 13:12:22
It Comes To Me	Nancy Ann Hemsworth	The "child of innocence" theme has played among many late nineteenth century poets, mostly in America, with Walt Whitman its favored representative. Your poem's reflection is from that innocent point of view. In the bewilderment shown over so little, if any, ground gained, "Then in defeat/Change, cowards back" (the verb form is cowers) you touch upon the peril of the times. The enormity of this is even expanded by the subtle way you have of doing it and from that innocent point of view. Your inversion, placing subjects, verbs, direct objects, etc. in positions best suited to rhyme and meter is excellent. You exhibit a real knack for it. Your final verse is a grand finale of astute realization, what the media (movies and news presentation) has made of all facets by which our outrage might serve change...subliminally resolving any such drive to the artificial "resolution" laid upon us by soap opera. Our emotions become laid on, just like icing on a cake. It's best you don't hint at intention. For in the way you have chosen, innocent point of view, you invite for more in. Easily the best poem submitted so far this month. Keep it up, Nancy Ann. JCH	2007-03-17 09:44:55
another Janis Fan	DeniMari Z.	A nice use of her song titles, DeniMari. Interesting you focus more on, "Bobby Magee", you must have found like accord in someone you knew. Janis struck "soul assonance" with me a few times but she never made her male fans (like me) feel ostracized. Though I often heard comments about her "unattractiveness" she had some real lasting beauty to me. Well, you did hit on my favorite song, Take a Piece of My Heart, and she did...to this day. You have a little bit of Janis there inside, it's peeking around the edges of this poem. Well constructed, sensitive lyrics appropriate even to song. I may have done the same for the old Bob Dylan, but he had nothing on Janis. Nobody did. Hope we keep up the Janis Month theme. I'm already hunting old albums and trying to find a new magnetic cartridge for an old dusty turntable. JCH	2007-03-14 12:14:58
Anticipation - Etheree #4	Mary J Coffman	Mary, a well chosen style, providing a steady crescendo (like a refrain might) progressing, with each line, towards a deliberate end. Although this unrequited longing, this "sallow subsistence" where "Solitude extinguishes ties", the hope for the "flame" to the "unburned candle" remains. Indeed well thought out, else there would be no "bed of frozen tears". This form subscribes to a need for universal truth, as indeed most styles for short poems require. Otherwise there is the ring of the jingle, the trite, too personal tone of the self-centered vanity. Something you're gifted adequately to overcome, in most all poems you write. In this respect the poem offers us all a euphemism/metaphor for what the unfulfilled expectations of youth leave to us in age. Although, "lifeless loins languish for tempestuous tenderness" is clearly at the erotic end of the experience spectrum, so (as Freud once stated) are most all our societal drives. Your imagery is fresh, the line, "an unburned candle waiting for a flame", inspired. Successful poem achieving elegance. JCH	2007-03-13 11:26:21
In His Love, I Want to Live	DeniMari Z.	DeniMari, the elegant concerns here of the spirit and deep faith exampled require, for best presentation the very best of style and grammatical delivery. You have chosen, instead of the rustic, to flow in the style of poetic form and the message should be expressed by such attention to detail. A dangling participle interrupts that flow, instead of, "my soul is praying for", how about something like, For the deeper bond my soul is praying? One other change might enhance the power, especially in the last line, "For this prince to believe in my life all the way". Jesus is a diety, capitalize prince. "all the way" is too much like a sports cheer or White House press corps. handling of the war. Let's try something like, For this Prince to know my heart is full of Him. (Dieties don't believe, they know.) Slight changes to be sure, but I think they will make enough difference to enhance your poem in a way its theme most certainly deserves. JCH	2007-03-11 10:52:50
Immersion	Mary J Coffman	The confusion of senses here is interesting, Mary. "fiery red cinders of/abandon" and "cherry flavored vertigo/of your kiss" are admixtured into imagery expressing the feelings of bewilderment and daze. Taken over, "as I drown", progressed from, "I swim", the reader comes to fathom this poem's first person as the sensual embodiment of its own title, Immersion. Partly, losing sense to become so immersed, we come to have, as readers an almost prurient voyeurism with that, "cerise center/of your bloom". Naughty, naughty, naughty. JCH	2007-03-11 08:49:13
lost	charles r pitts	Mr. Pitts, in poetry form should be selected to enhance either a poem's meaning, image, or to mirror, in itself, something about the historical relationship of the poet to another, so well know in the past as to secure meaning. Yours qualifies on the first two counts and, to some degree, on the third. "Lost" as the first person is here, the poem reflects that state of mind in the wondering between statement and question, between deciding on stanza and/or one long run-on sentence. Capturing the mood appropriate, "as the wind blows without direction" (superb contradiction,) the poem weaves in and out of direct charge upon societal ill and the philosophical questioning, in the end, to find some salvaging value left. In perspective interpretation, you have presented the reader, sort of, a suicide note. Almost an inarguable one. For each reader that approaches your poem is challenged to reconstruct value to living and in so doing, either passing the litmus test of self-examination or failing...growth or fail-safe unthinkingness, dismissing the rampant truth here like some pot hole that jarred their car without damaging it. Walking away wondering just what put you in such a fouled up mood. They have to, to keep from succumbing...now, don't they? But maybe wiser. We can only hope. JCH	2007-03-10 09:10:59
Just Stuff	DeniMari Z.	DeniMari, these are prose images. Very good images but distinct, too distinct for poetry. The modern poetry, since non-determinism, requires a degree of indistinctness, something for which the reader provides, through mental interplay, something of his/her imagination to the mix. This is what sets poetry, as a genre, from prose, as a genre. We don't talk much here, either on the forum or within critiques, about poetics in any depth. It galls me that people throw around technical terms and count of lines and pedic meter with a word or two newly discovered from the dictionary, as some kind of compensation for knowing so little about literature and demands to be made on poet and reader alike. Otherwise, as bright as you are and as long as you've been here, you would have acquired these distinctions. It's confirmed me to be a better critic. Please work on this poem so I can so much better indulge its richness as prose within the framework of poetry. It indeed has the promise to justify the effort. JCH	2007-03-08 09:08:23
Remnants	Mary J Coffman	A poem that deserves closer inspection than cursory. Most of the images are well unified in meanings, some parallelist, like: the comparison of wilting petals to "bloodstained litter". In the dreamscape of sleep, memories are indeed "ruddled reminders", if not rudderless. That I would hesitate to reference my own dreamscape with "lullabies", still the subject is remnants and that might lend to comparison of dreaming WITH the "tangled echos" some experiences come to be with the mind and its blending of the past with the present. The reader becomes taken with the tone of this poem, one, in a moment somewhat morose, then contemplative. In the end it brings self-reflection and that's success. JCH	2007-03-07 19:49:06
It looks like a potato	Mark Andrew Hislop	Not much to say about this one, oh candid-appreciating one, so I'll just address one of your vastly better poems (I so mistakingly hit the skip button on.) This is a critique on "A friendship book". Aside from "a midnight chlorophyll for sun" in the first line, this is a spectacular poem, Mark. The desparation of coming to some point in life where we lose sight of the great truth, You Can't Go Home Again, to trade in the past...thereby inviting the attendant debacle of reliving its stream, well justifies the stark tone of this poem. And it is stark. Beginning with such images as, "children, squeezed out by the great cramp of years" to the finality of, "as if words were mere ways to lie" and, "for lovers, friendship were some disease." Your luck truth is a defense against libel. You realize how many institutions you just fell? "as if convection would not work/with cold", the unifying line. This places the poem elegantly apart what it might otherwise have become, lost in time to just another relenting of bad experience. For it thus becomes more than a mere brush with life but a full view. You are refining...well except for the potato thing. Send that to your friend Michael Dean. He'll think you are remorseful. JCH	2007-03-07 11:26:06
under the windtunnels	Ellen K Lewis	The euphemism of "wind tunnels" is an interesting one for the alternative to companionship we find today among society-at-large, "but you can't hold what the wind takes away." Herein the reader can progress to many parallels in life with this "wind" and its parallels, as the storm can approach being what of life is perplexity. All forms of rhyme are present here, working very well as yours usually examples. Resignation to "gravity" in the last line is appropriate to man's condition on this earth in many ways, amid a society that offers less and less direction, but more and more confusion to roles, values, morals. "I am covered by their shadows", the best divergence you make in imagery from your repeated play on "wind tunnels, is yet not a forceful enough element to well compete. This poem needs such a dramatic relief or the reader comes to feel you harangue an issue. A stronger image/images would do nicely. Otherwise, Ellen, you show remarkable ability with poetic language, especially the way you have of turning lines so they seek with their meanings, echo. The romantic illusion is in this, as with some of your other work, although shown somewhat to have failed you. If you make more a universal contruence of this tendency, your poem will draw on more power. JCH	2007-03-05 09:03:13
Sing Lady	Mary J Coffman	Well, Mary, you just committed every sin known to Mr. Dean. Deliciously. The instrument of directing a reader on how to read the poem, something I mentioned in the thing-not-worthy-of-a-debate that we partook in with him is well refined in your poem, a poem I might add that might be taken to pay homage to the African White Goddess. I might have refrained from technical music element ("crescendo turns to coda") to be more in keeping with the more classical/mythical tone of the poem. "tanzanite tears" is most meaningful to one who knows the gemstone but the exotic relieves it of any requirement they must. "ocherous orb/sinking in cinnamon seas" does not evoke the imagery it might in more contrast. Ocher has the color of cinnamon and its namesake cinnibar, the ore of mercury. As I drink in the richness of what you give, more colors contrasting would be nice. Small things, something to think about. Very enjoyable by someone familiar with the Dark Continent that isn't all that dark. I would be remiss, however, not to mention that hoofs, even their sound and the play of it, must be owned by something more substantial in order to suckle. The reader will have problems with this and it is disruptive to an otherwise flowing poem. Tell us a little more about to what these hoofs belong. Hooves is fine, but hoofs if preferred. Now, Mary, I've seen what you're capable. I'll be bearing down on you. At least until I get Mr. Dean out of my craw. JCH	2007-02-11 23:50:13
Woe To the Forgotten Poets!	Ellen K Lewis	Well, to some extent, Ellen (though your poem elsewhere has a highly regarded poetic sensitivity and demonstrates high art in the expression of it, I would take exception to your last verse. Perhaps "genre's" (the plural form stays the same) is true...in that Philistines and people from Coventry are apt (at least thought so) to be generically lacking in such matters, "tribes" have, at almost every level back to Neanderthal, appreciated the poetic, at least in chant. The conduct of their life indeed was surrounded by a perception of spiritual framework that demanded it. So much so that today the African and Australian aborigine are among the most spiritually gifted on earth. And you can't be spiritual can you?...without the Muse? Your opening lines and stanzas address the vacuity left in the absence of Muse, don't they? Something/someone that comes to us like an unmet lover we never find by looking? Sometimes "wisdom renown" can be nothing more than making absolute truth and its clarity inescapable. Because, and here is my main point, we can lose in poetic sensitivity with progress just as we can be young to it. Still, you come out of the misaprehension finely, reflecting well on the wonderful relase "fresh poetry" can be to the poet. Finding the way to share its "virtue" with your reader is told you by the rare glimpses of newness discovered usually quite by incident. And that's the Muse. I think mine is a lady, but I'm not sure. You have an excellent facility with the line but a little too much contrivance apparent to rhyme (see?...you have me doing it.) Relax and you talent will come, just as the Muse to inspire newness to your expression of it. JCH	2007-01-27 14:15:05
Marl and Blood	marilyn terwilleger	The simile is seldom used as well in illusion. Had you have paralleled the seasons with the traipse of man upon this "marl", perhaps suggesting him something of a season unto itself...the results, my dear, would have been spectacular. That in mind, and this poem, and the title, The Fifth Season would have been a poetic triumph. It's not too late. JCH	2007-01-27 11:22:50
The archers	Mark Andrew Hislop	The plight of mankind to societal blindness fascinates itself with social pathology. Serial killers, especially. And without asking why. That has always perplexed me. Perhaps there is more wisdom sometimes in the subconscious and that is the part of the mind so interested. It is acquiring the why, that why being we do move to destroy our obsession, beauty being no exception. Simply to be free of what we cannot seemingly overcome in any other way. While the poet's Byzantium will always represent the man coming to terms with that...without resorting to pathology. War should teach us all how easily we can be swayed, just as the Crusaders when they sacked Constantinople, to that madness. JCH	2007-01-24 07:36:23
Undone	Joan M Whiteman	Jane, having grown up among Blue Laws and at tables where one was regarded disrespectful if they didn't break a slice of already thin-cut bread, well do I know from whence you come. These practices and all their attendant superstition obtained nothing, less than nothing, for all the good they did. Like giving organized crime a fat business monopoly with Prohibition. "old uncles" in relation to the Great Wall is a splendid illusion. At least, in the scope of time, the Great Wall was prophylactic if not to become a good tourist attraction. I think, sadly, we have a recent submission whose author would retire into such tensil trappings. Rather than weigh things any other way. A most unnecessary resignation. Perhaps it is but misplaced loyalty, I hope so. Of course, and as you suggest, it is what we REPLACE with these ritual practices that is the bite. Like common decency and common sense. JCH	2007-01-17 14:11:57
Sentience	Mary J Coffman	Hello, my dear, what are you doing tonight? Well, what more can I say, left fumbling around on my own Al Bundy-like? Breathtaking. Something appreciated more than you can know, unless you come back next time around, as a man. JCH	2007-01-13 11:02:06
The Chenille Bear	Dellena Rovito	A sweet poem, Dellena, operating at different levels yet treating its story with the same delicacy...the mark of accomplishment. Just add an s to linger ("he linger[s] still to feel such joy..." and this one is off to the races. I like "till dawn and on", its working with "song" is beautiful. You've a good ear and your poetry has improved considerably. I think perhaps, like me, it is becoming something of a way of life for you. There is nothing better than that. It can keep the heart strong through any travail. JCH	2007-01-10 10:54:24
In The Storm	marilyn terwilleger	What a superb line!, Marilyn, "And alive in your own audacity". You have emboldened me to present a poem whose time has come and whose meaning will walk through mine fields. But now, that you've treated my own psyche with a visit so well, I dare. Poets can achieve symbiosis of a sort, can't they? Look for such a thing in the last line of my poem, WASP (which I wrote yesterday,) paralleled with your next to last line, "Be free from dark imagined shame". Now, when I'm assailed I can say, "Marilyn made me do it". Your creation of poetscape (don't know that poetic license extends to critiques, but what-the-hell, coining words and phrases is fun) has become your calling card, one that has alarmed me in the past with its direness sometimes, because you've become so developed at it. Since, however, here you depict a silence (tattersoll) and portray stillness throughout, you might change your title to something like, The Storm Within. And that's what you're really about here...but I'll keep quiet about that. I'm going to be in enough trouble with my next poem. JCH	2007-01-10 09:31:37
Scarlet and Snow	Mary J Coffman	That "splash of ruby red", "a single scarlet drop/upon a frosted stage" with wafting wings and wintersong, has to be a redbird. To play amid your "glistening sequined boughs" with subtle wind to produce illusion of "air aglitter". A captured moment. One I have had but whose frame you've better placed more upright upon the wall of my recollection."Mystical morning melodies", "winged journeys", "winter's clothes"...no better conjuration of winterland spell. Had one ever been so lapse in observation as to have compared winter with the grave, you've turned them on their head. And made the resiliance of life and living more mindful to one prone to sometimes forgeting in what only appears to cursory view as wasteland. JCH	2007-01-09 13:48:28
The Girl On the Bridge	Ellen K Lewis	Ellen, again as with many of my poems, we touch close to the debate that deals with discerning between poetry and prose. In such a story as you weave here, the poetic calling card is, that it is woven. In prose, it is still adequate, not needing any expansion to provide context. An odd thing to accomplish, to satisfy the requirements of both genres. The poetry is in the way you have chosen to tell the story. What might be take as a break in transition in prose, here is the blank to be filled in by poetic illusion. The stanzas are not transitionally linked as paragraphs would be in prose, room for imagination. The device, "If only...", again not resolving enough for prose, room for imagination. The interpretaion of inside mental workings not your own, "he really wasn't sure anymore", license, again, beyond that prose allows (when you haven't developed that point of view.) But it is more than poetry by exclusion, it is the compact and feeling way to tell of tragedy we see too often around our mortal construction, where momentary mistake can lead to life-long consequence. You create in the mind, so much better by the imagery, the questions readers must ponder. Like that of troubling between cause: devotion or guilt. And that is where this succeeds as poetry. JCH	2007-01-09 09:40:48
Winterpane - Etheree #3	Mary J Coffman	I believe I've discovered the purpose in this poetic genre, to disguise the simile by removing "like" from the context. Thus the image better becomes the thing. So we SEE the magic of looking at poetscape through frost covered pane and we SEE how, through imagination, such "illustrations" can be "vitreous". Such a short poem to teach such a big discovery. JCH	2007-01-09 09:21:40
Ah, Such Memories	Erzahl Leo M. Espino	It is so good to have you back, Erzahl. We've missed you, too. And what wonderful image-making you create in this poem with the illusion. The subtlety of a smiling half moon is such a mood catching way to end this poem and parallels so well both glimpses at "the sky" and, perhaps, TPL. The musing of soliloquy is here but with the light remorse of once unshared memory. But now you can share them. JCH	2007-01-09 09:10:25
Tigers & Camels & Zebra's-oh my!	Ellen K Lewis	Ellen, had not the Wizard of Oz not subscribed well to Freudian Analysis, your poem certainly does. What usually comes straight from the heart retains such candor and, like with the expressions of a child, bares itself to the very psyche. That trueness is detected instinctively by children and that is why your calling is obviously, like that of Baum, Milne and Carroll, wonderfully discernable to a child...even overgrown ones like me. Kissing toads and the steaming nostrils of stallions in the mountains hearkens beyond the mundane, metaphors attaching to universal imagery. Better than a Christmas tree your menagarie spell-binds the imagination and finds its own, Yellow Brick Road. When the impressionists discovered the camera had made realism an antiquated genre in art, poets had, likewise, the opportunity to acknowledge that form should accede as much to imagery and substance. That this did not happen is tragic and is why free verse such as yours and mine is, I think, vastly underrated. JCH	2007-01-09 08:43:53
The Nights Before Christmas	Joan M Whiteman	Joan, I'm sorry this poem has not been received better. It should have been given more acclaim than it has. But truthful as your message is, it is not falling well upon those most concerned with heeding it. Indeed it is too timely, too true and doesn't hang on a Christmas tree as much of an adornment. What an irony...too needed to say. Except for you and peeping me. Exquisite in understatement, your poem is exceptional.	2007-01-07 08:57:49
My Fur Coat	Dellena Rovito	Dellena, you little mischief-maker. Now, I wouldn't have thought anything about fur skin...removed, that is, for a coat. Instead of your play upon the stalwart senses of political correctness. Of course I write poems about trappers baiting traps with live bait. And, still, I love animals, critters of all sorts and children. Even children critters. Do you know, that as a tribute to the breed, the Japanese skin their Akitas when they die and put the pelt on the wall? Doesn't hurt them a bit. Still, your poem put-on (pun intended) is the best of all. Hope Rachel didn't get to the last line. Very good free verse structure. JCH	2006-12-28 14:21:44
Colors	marilyn terwilleger	The kaleidoscope is a sensual trigger to the eyes, glimpsing back our budding infant exposures to the wonders of perspective. Your poem well portrays this and the way our sensual aspect retains a love for such stimuli. In an interesting and almost arresting choice of words, i.e., "besiege", "laggard", you give relevance further to the dramatic last line, "startle my soul". Definitely a case where little is more. Brought back my own childhood recollection of those first memories of a Christmas tree. JCH	2006-12-27 11:35:01
Lila	DeniMari Z.	Cindy James, really interesting. The Russians give a paternymic middle name to their children, taken after the given name of the father. Wonder if that's the case here. Very nice opening, novel in the perspective we're tracing the story line from the doll back, instead of simply a child wishing for it. You might do better with a tighter rhyming scheme, but then I seldom use one at all and you can rightfully accuse me of disingenuity. Not for the sake of form but that children, your best audience here, are apt to be oddly more conscious of that. They get an effect in their heads and expect it lyrically repeated. Kind of goes away in time though, after the blows to the head thing of growing up. DeniMarie, you have a nice quality you give to poeming that attaches well to lyrics. You might consider giving songwriting a try. JCH	2006-12-26 11:25:04
Heavens Christmas	DeniMari Z.	Subtle assonance in this poem is most remarkable. Led to it by matching the meter with the assonant rhyme is quite an accomplishment. "blessed" with "Jesus" is the best success. Your economy with words and pleasantly dropped imagery defeats the cliche' effect we might otherwise associate with the bombardment of cheering greeting cards and and overdone marketing techniques hitting our senses this time of year. Yes, DeniMari, a pleasant change. And a heartfelt one. JCH	2006-12-26 11:09:27
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