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
The Power Of The Pen	Dellena Rovito	Simply, but with impacting purity, Dellena, you portray the writer's almost spiritual imperative to write. As denigrated as it so often might be, you step forward with a disarming innocence the anti-intellectual, I'm certain, must find a rebuke. To them, these minimalists of all that is possible in mankind, we can only write to, "show off". Anything finer must, in their poorly developed scope, be purely pretense. I'm certain this will be a definite requirement for the thought police idiots like Gingrich promotes...to be a dolt self- satisfied in your doltdom, even sublimated in it. I know of no other meaningful way to reach another than: "I extend my pen in hand in friendship". Yes. JCH	2006-12-22 10:37:17
the Season of the War	Ellen K Lewis	We easily forget those making the ultimate sacrifice this dismal war is taking, just as we did in and after the War in Viet Nam. I've always said, Ellen, that those that breed these wars work overtime to try and represent protest against the war as protest against the soldier. It is not. More than anything else it is FOR the soldier. The confusion, I'm certain is intended...with full media co-operation. Have you noticed the failings of the media to approach soldiers that have been extricated from the war, either by wounds or time served, for interview? Even during Desert Storm there was some feed-back from them. Not now, the Manager of Thought Department of the White House has found a way to keep the media in line. It's easy when big business is allowed to monopolize the networks and press because the anti-trust laws are selectively enforced. Fewer rich (most likely Republican) owners with which to have to deal. Wonder what flavors of new disease this war will add to the social equation? We got Desert Storm Snydrome out of the last. Ask Lora how well the VAHs are taking care of them. Your poem sets a most proper and concerned perspective about the whole affair. We are responsible, more than anything else, for the fate of our precious men and women who have braved the unknown for noble cause. Not asking why or wherefore, but led by the values we taught them. As you, I pray for their body and souls and safe return. Vastly too many have died and, as with Viet Nam, I fear their deaths will one day come to be thought of even more bitterly by their loved ones than had they sacrificed in a war that held more meaning. I believe you imply similar concerns in your poem. JCH	2006-12-22 10:10:10
Retribution	Mary J Coffman	Mary, there is a barrage here of reaction, obviously intended towards some object of your derision, but the effect, unless you wish to be perceived in little more than rage, is not directed to anything you've given face. In literature, relief, whether comic or to add depth through allowing complexity, is required. Nothing is purely evil, nothing purely bad... to focus as you do here, without that relief, is to suggest your rage is blind, though it may very well not be. You have created wonderful imagery, turned some grand lines, serve them better by a rewrite. That would better give me an opportunity to extol your virtues as the poet I know you to be. JCH	2006-12-19 13:02:51
Taking On The Day	Dellena Rovito	A most delightful poem, Dellena. Most specifically in its appreciation that we cannot dispose ourselves to referencing our durations purely to the framework of one plane, or even planet, of our existance. God did not mean all those yearnings He gave us to end in naught. There is a keen power in the expectation of them fulfilled. In this poem you demonstrate this understanding and you deliver the true meaning of faith, instead of the blind resignation most make of it. Thus the "day" becomes timeless and our aspirations an unending pursuit among the stars (universe) until, we get to where, "I am going". In an irony, though you've shed the use of your legs, my dear, you've shed,too, the chronic social illness of self-absorption that keeps so many churning inside a space no larger than a rabbit hole. The poetic diction you have acquired has grown and the way of poetic language is becoming yours as well. You have talent but more than that, you have the moral core to give it purpose. JCH	2006-12-19 12:43:13
A Christmas Tale	marilyn terwilleger	That Christmas could serve so well to punctuate events in life, as shown here, is part of life-lived-well. The fullness has its own splendor and your ability to deal with it so lightly (I do) a device magnificantly applied, Marilyn. I think I'm getting Christmas already...supplied in full bounty by the ladies of TPL. Perhaps you're just trying to put me in a good mood so I'll be nice to everyone. I'm trying but my cheeks puff out sometimes. Merry Christmas, my dear. Texas has been really warm these last few days...maybe that will be a welcome change for you. JCH	2006-12-16 21:49:17
Jewel	Nancy Ann Hemsworth	Vision, even that of a planet as a gem among others, is best in such simple statement. Playing on the readers own frame of reference, it calls upon the same and achieves more mystery. Economy with words can be a powerful thing, demonstrated well by our red brothers. As a conjuration, your poem has its own beauty and places earth within it. And from space, the earth does have a sapphire quality. Pleasurable read, Nancy. JCH	2006-12-16 21:40:02
Walking In Your Holy Land	Claire H. Currier	Would that I could adorn a tree, a mantle, some respected place within my humble abode with the season tidings and warm faith in what all this, at its best comes to represent...what is found in your poem, Claire. Sometimes I think that mankind has some aversion to reaffirmation, that the commercial take-over of Christmas has someting to do with that, like placing an X where Christ belongs in the very name. The refrain is especially wholesome, its placement perfectly made. A sweet poem from a sweet lady. Merry Christmas, JCH	2006-12-10 09:42:54
Home Is Where Your Truck Is	Ellen K Lewis	You and your truck, yes quite sexy. You'd be a hit on any score especially here in Texas. You have one the the greatest and inviting parlors, while all I have is a cup of coffee. Your wall-paper is the road and your spare room is the next off-road adventure. And you want to know if I think you're sexy. You've the spirit to be more than that. That truck, though...you really want to know?...well it's just the silver tray you're upon. JCH	2006-12-06 13:54:49
Ready?	marilyn terwilleger	Have we still an appreciation of ultimate resolution...and an ultimate outcome to our successes/failings? Are these things decided in polarities of good versus evil, heaven versus hell? Your poem is not a mere thundering on the old drum of damnation, but, rather, a haunting expectation just maybe there should be some kind of accounting. And that is with what I can agree. For it is all found in the mind, the anchor of the soul to this particular life. "to walk/ The avenues of penitence" is not solely some score and as you place it in contrast to the childish hopes some will have for a magic key to the "Bejeweld gates", the appreciation for good works is sounded. Indeed, "The ultimate stress exists between/Life and the path to death" underlies your own ultimate intention here. Coming to terms with ourselves may very well fasten to where we are focusing next, whether it be peaceful resignation to death, some heavenly reward, or just a new start at some race with another redundant finish line. Depth that I have come to expect, Marilyn. JCH	2006-12-06 10:31:57
EXPOSED	Mark D. Kilburn	Mark, here you are on the road to something more remarkable than your last poem I critiqued. Creating only partially the euphemism of our systemic ills "exposed" your singular flaw is in not reaching a strong unifying last line...almost anything would be better than a salutory well wish. Your strength is in a powerful intensity delivered in a graphical manner solely your own. It is like a dying breath not to build toward an ending more dynamic. You metaphorically enhance a wonderful image of Man's house, of wood, of haunting memories, of woodlands "suddenly sullen" when they, as Man "exposed" to "winter", are bared. Indeed, "ghosts will forever be watching", but not dancing. Just a few simple changes and you have successful poem. I'm looking for a big stick now. JCH	2006-12-06 10:06:01
Would You Deny Me One of My Small Joys?	Kenneth R. Patton	Well, yes, poetic license allows for the slightly less astute (I'm really not all that certain about this) point of view of our canine pets. "Small joys" indeed gives the game away, although I think a frisbee might add a little more to critter pleasure. Saki (H.H. Munro) once wrote a short story about "Tobermory", a cat that could talk. He was the collective pet in a boarding house and liked to prowl about...to the chagrin of all concerned as the case came to be. One day Tobermory decided to quip some of the comments at the dinner table with some fine remarks about what he had observed on his many prowls, who was sneaking to whose room late at night, and who had some other less than alluring habits. The fine tabby was quickly evicted. Your dog is well characterized, even though he can't vocalize, you've paid close attention to his other communication skills. The poem itself is a frolic to read. JCH	2006-12-03 14:23:31
Shine On Star Of Hope	Ellen K Lewis	One of the characteristics of publishing historians I dispise the most is this propensity to try and view the chronology of man in some progressively moral way...as if we just have to get better, that we are somehow diluting the "savage" from us in trade for some fictional character of higher repute. Instead, we develop weapons that are tactically far less discriminate, have militarists that create scenarios by which they can experiment with them on the unsuspecting and end with examples of anti-progression like the Holocaust and all sorts of subsequent epics of engineered genocide right up to now. You poem recognizes the true process of mankind here and not surrealistically, the way some might like to think. The value to Anne Frank was she put a face on it. I can imagine a number of very powerful people not too happy with that. The great value of your poem is that it resounds with a theme of our all being together in this pot stirred by monsters. And that, is the only way of looking at it that can compel the slightest recourse to something better. Something that would smack of "progression". "tattered and torn they rent them", an inspired line that offers a great deal more to the mind in its pathos, than a whole vast novel like Tolstoy's, War and Peace. Powerful poem, Ellen, not one for the timid. I kind of don't like them either. JCH	2006-11-29 03:10:39
Falls Are Bronze and Gray	Thomas Edward Wright	Deep within, we know an address to the dead is a soliloquy to ourselves. Coming to terms with loss is not only the boast of mourning, hair pulling and fits of crying, but the labor of thought through the mind struggling to come to terms with its own thought obligation to mortality. You, like Camus' protagonist in, The Stranger, have found your own way and, like him, it traffics little with appearance. It is a profundity the gesticulating will never know. The use of seasonal reference is splendid in its capture, reflecting your brief blending, as summer into fall, fall into winter, from life to death while still "exonerating" attachement in, "Your breath, our burden, your hurts, our pain." The connection is not, nor ever, gone. In posing a "return to mingle with the same ghosts" you create an interesting contradiction that becomes only resolved in your again intellectualizing the connection to the dead memorially. The reader is brought, as I'm certain you intended, to view that "wave goodbye" as not nearly so final as ultimate resignation. For you have a favored place retained. I only hope that I might someday be mourned the same way. JCH	2006-11-27 17:20:41
Stepping Stone	DeniMari Z.	DeniMarie, having grown up in circumstances mindfully painful still, your poem sets off those "steps" intended to bring one up "to par" by one voraciously brutal parent upon a child selected as their own whipping post. That child was my younger brother whom I defended and by doing so, received my own torments. One reason I spent so many summers elsewhere. I would have taken my brother with me if I had been so allowed. It is a wonder he survived his childhood. In juxtaposing being knocked down the stairs with "Stepping Stone", presumably up, you capture the great self-deceit of the child abuser. Why, they're just making you tough, life was so hard on them...you'll thank them one day for the "great regard". That's not exactly what my brother came out of it thinking. Neither one of us EVER touched our children in anger. And the self-piety, self-styling religion just to somehow santify cruelty. There is not one line of this hard hitting poem that does not hammer a sensitive reader into its picture, a picture of how personal dignity suffers outrage in the face of domestic violence "practiced with impunity". My dear, when one suffers these things, under the pressure of trying not to be the one to bring the house down upon even those loved ones innocent there, the misery need'nt be thought of as self-pity. More properly, it might be thought the wish to divulge something the pressure of self-restraint leaves in the gut...in order to be without it. I hope, in some small way, to have helped this process. A dynamic poem, one whose effect is such that this reader won't treat it by its parts. Reverently won't do so. My absolute hope that the rest of your life be free of such as this. JCH	2006-11-27 09:42:57
Intentions	Dellena Rovito	Almost ear-marking the difference between faith and religiosity, your poem preserves the importance of accountablity our "deportment" in living life means to ANY valid cosmology. Some would substitute ceremony for such requirement, but that suffices just about as much as trying to make a package pretty that contains a broken brick. Not that it hasn't become an adopted practice, even defining a whole class of soul-less The Gap shopping yuppies. Guess that all started when people designed a logo for jeans to cover the leer usually accorded a pert rump. It must have transferred some of that lust thing to a subliminal representation. Suppose if we can learn to acquire a taste for Cold Duck and Saturday Night Live's obsession with pushing gang-banging rappers, we can acquire a taste for anything, even idiots in the White House. And so we have. Poignant poem, Dellena. JCH	2006-11-25 13:31:43
Quill	Mark Andrew Hislop	The brevity of life holds little meaning for those that have not come to the awareness of what there is to accomplish in it, fully. The bitter- sweetness of growth. Attaining that is not the end of it...or doesn't have to be. Each day can be a new awakening to discovery, somehow a mimicry, of sorts of rebirth. Just yesterday I observed a blue jay mocking crows, something I had only seen magpies doing (and of course, parrots.) Like in a Hugo novel, even the imprisoned can draw on powers of mind and observation to sustain values to continuing life. It is only the self-absorbed, those always looking for others to entertain them, that complain of being bored and hang life on one big coat hook. Mark, sometime ago I singled you out for success as a poet. In this poem is just another example of why I did so. I only point this out to you, and you SPECIFICALLY because one day I know you will realize being else than a poet for you is atrocious misdirection. I can't pound the faith in you that you have what it takes to realize recognition as an accomplished poet, but I would if I could. So much for that. Suffice it to say, here is the gem I draw from this one poem that so many times has its equal in other poems you write...for which I am want to prod you in the ass as I have done here. "your footsteps hit/the corridor/like an interrogation". Poetry, if it is anything is the finding of new things to say or of saying old things in new ways that make people less likely to miss understandings they otherwise leap about and over in the way they come to terms with the mundane. This imagery makes them ask, "how is this possible" and they find some steps they've missed in the backtrack. It's beauty is another thing and, yes, it has that too. I'll spare you redundancy. Put the little book together, thick head! JCH	2006-11-22 11:25:45
INJUSTICE	Debbie Spicer	No, Debbie, it is not sad...it is an outrage. Throughout the land, the system has fallen to hell. Ten times worse in civil courts and in family courts, simply because media takes little interest what happens there, ironically the criminal element gets the best shake. I've gone through this, involved in a law suit that lasted over 3 years and four different lawyers. Each one either wouldn't do the filings or they simply sold out...caught one doing just that. Once the feds supplied some degree of oversight to the system, but in keeping with the model of holding back federal funds to a state for not implementing federal agenda, they inversely promise not to return indictments against locals if they give up their authority over feds in limiting federal venue. Now you have a seedbed for corruption we didn't have during Prohibition. Corrupt DAs pick and choose what cases will go before the Grand Jury and civil law cases receive the most bizarre of rulings, with the innocense of victims almost a trophy for the system to display its arbitrariness. Family courts, thought to look out for the interests of children, won't take the time to examine their cases closely enough TO adequately do so. Dangerously disturbed parents are ending up with custody and killing children. Totally impervious to pleas from those concerned that dangers are apparent. I like the way your poem step-by-step develops the travel through this procedural jungle. "The trial was long with continued deception", harkons your expectation of fair treatment. "The jury in a place unfamiliar to them", delivers what plight juries, selected from those, though supposed peers, are really not equipped to be adequate to the task and are too often led to decisions. "Discrimination remains at all cost", the ultimate indictment of a system that makes choices just as opposed to common sense as it is to decency, with an obvious predilection to side. Yes, Debbie, it is all a lesson in injustice, from a system fallen to perversion, enjoying the power to be wrong, not to correct it. JCH	2006-11-20 08:58:57
Leaving the abbey	Mark Andrew Hislop	Mark, I can't properly critique this since I've no clue to whom it is in reference. Still, I'm somewhat obliged to remark on the elegant simplicity to be found in the verse, "Pray that all our reaching,/brother, finds its north true/like your humanity." Holding back on that unbridled creativity to effect marvelous imagery, you've exampled a new maturity here. Appropriate to the solemn theme (I guess) in this case it is a gathered restraint. I do hope, however, you will not spare the wonderful imagizing in your next offerings. Hope you and yours are well, JCH	2006-11-19 17:53:04
Ghost Town	marilyn terwilleger	Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau began traditions for us that offered either philosophical debate or drew upon posits that placed us in quandary. Thus came such interesting structures as, "son, father to the man" and the great, and still enduring debate, over, state versus individual, regarding one's calling to an order higher than the laws of man. So it is that your splendid poem here, might remind me of, not just one, but all three. You, as the presumed protagonist, are mother to the man, whether husband or father, in the nurturing insights you gather on the sake of another's past. William Blake, father to all such expanding ideas in poetry, founded the genre with these qualities, but did them himself so far removed from personage, as to have kept the distance between his audience and stage, like did Greek drama. Your poem is the progeny of all these forged traditions, while your addition to the soup, is their utilitization into the highly personal world of actual event. Like a culmination of what others have set for you. You do them all justice. Your poem has maturity, emotional purity, and the eye of a mother's love. Now why do I lay upon the table a little journey into literary history? Well, the answer is simple. You are favored in the comparison. And your skill in this poem gives me license to place you in that esteem. It was kind of a duty to. You are acquiring the ability to do more with imagery than provide a scenery of sorts. You do so in: "when summer idled"; enhancing a point of desolation with the roaming antelope, with "gaze unconcerned"; the winds blowing across sand. This is the maturity of an accomplished poet, Marilyn. I've commented on this attribute of yours before, but you're getting even better. Take out the two last lines. You've already said them...hell, you've embodied them. Leave the poem where it rightfully belongs, more universal to us all. But you have made it much harder in the voting for me. I may have to break a promise. JCH	2006-11-19 13:51:38
Have To Go In	Ellen K Lewis	Ellen, because of the close personal nature of the story here, how exceedingly rare it is that someone even can tell it, and of its multi-level nature (your coming to terms with radical brain surgery/the loss of time and the duration of the recovery period/loss of your mother before recovery/ feelings of "unfinished business" in settling things with your mother...all are meat enough for free verse. Rhyme can sometimes seem to trivialize the impact, and I believe it does here. Not that the poem does not still stand as impacting, your honesty and ability to capture those moments of trepidation pull your reader into those anxieties with you. As a story, even a drama, it has the dramatic core of a good play. And it has the "meat" to fulfill every requirement to, in every way, satisfy an audience developed into a play. You know me, I'm no purist, I enjoyed this just as it is. But the world sees things differently. If the little girl takes the Hope Diamond to show and tell when the teacher has settled on cowboys and Indians for a theme, splendor might have to take a back seat to "poor citizenship". What you have here could do justice to an epic poem of some 30 pages or more, where form is concerned. Where it is not, it could be magnificent in one. Stand back and think about it. Then, if you disagree, it's your story and you can tell me to climb a tree. I might get more oxygen to the brain that way and see something I missed. I just bashed my nose with a wrecking bar while clearing the concrete out of a post-hole. Maybe the heavens have taking a part in telling me where to better put it. Oh well, be that as it may, so far, your poem is in second place with me this month. JCH	2006-11-18 07:10:42
Ode To Winter	Ellen K Lewis	Well, Ellen, you are indeed correct about the count (pedic) of your poem. But that's not it's grandest quality. You turn the lines with such lyrical precision, songwriters would be envious. Once you correct the spellings, breathe for breath (the verb form)and Zeus for Zues, you're on the way with this one. Your last verse is my favorite, though perhaps not the best. Of course, that would be the first. You've given me a new way to look at The Archer. I think you could write lyrics with the best of them. JCH	2006-11-16 17:30:48
Bipolar and Me	stephen g skipper	More than an organ of the body (and the mind is more) it sustains the ability to heal itself unless you're somehow obliged to medical minimalism and "profit taking". And, though you might not change what has been wrought upon you (by really nothing more than opinions) it can be a difficult pill to swallow that you must face the world with less authority for it. While you may have accepted this lot, as I saw one other gifted member of TPL doing, it is with a certain sadness I witness your resignation. For in truth, Stephen, you may have nothing more (and nothing less) than the ability to see with emotion more of what others avoid. Society wants to confine such "abilities", to question them, nay, to inqusition them, in order to verdict find upon them some label that their differences are less. Meanwhile, in buying into the cloaked way this is done, "therapy", they can be allowed to steal precious individuality that otherwise might make contribution to society if bravely allowed. In spite of this, however, MANY great contributions to society HAVE been made by people such as yourself. And in most all fields. In England they have a Hyde Park for such as we, here they have a pill. Would you be "Craving the freedom of unfettered mind" that acknowledgement alone might make a difference. Although, I would like to learn more about this, "dallying with His Queen". I've been playing too dimensional a chess game. One small correction: "Tiredness/Pain/Remorse/Shame/Price(s) that has (have) to be paid before I can be saved". I am much impressed with the way your poem has of "inviting" readership into it. Too bad there isn't a door to slam once you get them in. JCH	2006-11-16 09:42:27
Pleaides Poem	marilyn terwilleger	Well, what would one call a poem whose each line started with a gerund? A gerundingo? I did one, you know. You been messing around in the Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics again. I'm going to take that away from you. Accomplishing cadence, this device is anti-pedia but works. In "still standing" you have the double entendre that cleverly allows a certain grace by intuitive sharing an empathy of the wind's force instead of just a desription of it. Usually something occuring only in higly developed writing. "be-known" is a Middle-English construction that means acknowledged, not just known. If you meant that, very clever of you. Have you read Chaucer? Now a rainbow "light(ing) my weary way" is really novel. Can we condense that into a lantern? Enjoyed, as usual, my dear. JCH	2006-11-15 20:30:44
Olfactory and Memory	Mark D. Kilburn	I am privilaged, Mark, to be allowed to touch this poem. Believe me, I do so in utmost regard and respect. It is like the graves of close friends I lost in that war and it is a homage to those recollections of the suffering survivors have shared with me. It is with bitterness I watch as a new generation is fed to this madness, out of little more than failed foreign policy and the most corrupt kind of agenda grinding. All the fat put into the pockets of the war profiteers does not justify the loss of one life to a war that lies began and distortions of the truth and common sense continue. I'm certain, in my own mind, so much of the damage, as shown in your tremendous poem, would not have manifested had the war had clear and defined objectives and subscribed to a cause that Americans could have identified. It did not, and the American veteran of it came home to being a double casualty of it. From your astute observation of how much our nose can trigger recollection, to the evident mental compensations one sublimates to endure the awful meaning of napalm, to what horrifyingly becomes "casual" in any war of occupation, to the acquired (what Viet Nam became famous for) use of heavy drugs, and to the ironic mix of present day street "warfare", yours is a reality check upon our culture's bare ass. Timeless and profound, it rings true in every respect. Poetically, the poem is beautiful. Where it succeeds the most is in never leaving one perspective but still "saying it all". Nothing would please me more than to see this poem win the prize this month. For a host of reasons.	2006-11-14 13:20:08
ANNE'S FLAME	Mark D. Kilburn	I think, Mark, you do well to construct this poem more as prose, in keeping with Anne Frank's diary. Would that you would have allowed her use of elegant understatment followed too. Be that as it may, it is powerful and connects with a universality applicable to all. The quality Solznetzin observes in One Day in the Life of Ivan Donisivitch, was carried so well in her Diary, it is what best led to my appreciation of her sweet sense of discovery, coming of age, as opposed to the dire circumstance of being inevitably found by captors. This, more than details of her plight, is the metaphor for us all among the human debris that would will itself to be our "captors". For that evil is always present. No one, with any semblance of will to penetrate to the truth doubts what the captives ruled "enemies of the NAZI state" went through. Instead of casting the matter, however, as solely a Jewish concern, which Anne superlatively avoided, draw us all in. ALL men and women of concience shared the same fate. That too often gets lost in historical agenda cranking. And that was not what this precious child was about either. I do, however, share every bit in your outrage, empathy and remorse, as you so poignantly represent, and so well write. JCH	2006-11-13 12:49:40
Wrath	marilyn terwilleger	There you go, giving Satan all the credit. What about all those explosions that were reported along the river dikes? Don't you believe in expedient urban renewal? Well, maybe you're right, Satan has diversified, gone into "legitimate" business like the mafia. Yes, the sea does whip up the wind and at 180 mph it does feel like biting teeth. "Drinking of their own breath" is an interesting image and one only to have been in a high wind would know. It's good enough I'll grant the euphemism of "Satan's wrath". Even the bit about "supplicating tears" although I hear, on good authority, he prefers cognac. Maybe that's why he took things a bit too far. Please excuse my levity, Marilyn, it's a good poem despite my irreverence. You get some mixed emotions about the strewn out victims of the storm when your area hosts them and they behave as they do here in town. Kinda wish we could repay Mexico for its "generosity". Love, JCH	2006-11-13 11:53:11
Sunday Morning Scene	Teresa Green	I believe you've submitted this before, Teresa. It is as good the second time around, especially for dog lovers. Regardless of the canine animation, it reminds me of a Renassiance still life, with the barks and fleeting "nose prints" some van de Meer cue in an otherwise frozen moment. One comes to view comfort in higly individualistic ways, your gate "evades strife" while others might think more of holding out the world. Again, I take this as a reference to your concern for holding in the dog. It might be more poetically edifying if we could construe this to a broader stage. But then, the focus plays, in ending, upon the more immediate and the "Spilled" presumably by Mr. Wagtail. Thus we come to realize your world is not without your pet, even in erstwhile musings, suffering plants and all, and that the dog may not be as much the intruder, as he is part and parcel, a sense of home. I've felt that way about a number of like critters and sometimes wish I still had the exhuberance to host more of them now than I do, knowing that I am the lesser for the lacking. But age is a tiring, if anything. JCH	2006-11-12 15:16:36
Ode To A Raging Sea	Nancy Ann Hemsworth	Mindful of Poe's short story, The Fall of the House of Mesingerstein, sound is a most relentless aspect of Nature's force. Personifying it with the traits of mankind or, at least, of the Gods, well impacts its presence among us. "Gash upon the shore" is a well thought euphemism for the erosion of tide in its menace to shoreline, while, the contrast, "lapped so gently at my feet," a clever parallel with the ambivalence in ourselves. But in the line, "How could I know the gall in your deceit", a contradiction is found in the last verse where you indeed tell us how, "Those souls released, their love once more bestowed". Is it, rather than deceit, these forces are the instrument of collective soul force displayed through Nature? That the symbiosis we have with her, at least in the eye/perceptions, is more than a mere aspect of our awareness? And that, in some way, the elements do not answer solely to the command of Moses? Your poem suggests these flights and such flights may have been once the province of temple cities and layered ziggarets that stepped their way towards the domains where we might think such things are decided. Or, perhaps your Muse is tapping genetic knowledge. JCH	2006-11-03 20:11:57
Sky Scraping	Dellena Rovito	In geologic time, uplift, and its causes are pronounced. To appreciate this poem one must fathom that. Alas, few are versed well in earth science, just as they are in most anything else. You've really committed the ultimate sin in the anti-intellectual's eyes, with your vastly above average use of language here, Dellena. Your multiple modifiers (now you have me doing it) are a real flag to the Arnie bull. I wonder how many will find the illusion of "mountains growing upended" as interesting as do I. Or imagine how everything must come to "dance" in time before Nature's forces. The monuments of Ozymandias and mountains, "comprised of rocks" are nothing more. And in comparison, momentary beauty of the earth's "pearl necklace" of clouds (so amazingly in contrast) can indeed carry as much, though in moments, as mountains in geologic time. JCH	2006-11-01 09:14:39
Light	marilyn terwilleger	Imagery becomes something more when the metaphor achieves a dual relationship (organic) with another imagist device as does the illusion of "Hearts beating in tune" with the metaphor, "with a song/Daybreak". Unspoken, but engendered, the play of "Sunrise" upon this process produces two forms of relationship which evoke a parallelism of warmth of sun, warmth of kiss. In all this "stirring" the pot, impressions come close to a mind grasp of the moment. Just about as close, I think, as we can come to sharing the experience. Well done, Marilyn. JCH	2006-10-29 08:54:43
Boo Boo Said the Pumpkin	Ellen K Lewis	I was wondering when you would turn the tide on the Black Sabbath. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with your seeming familiarity with it. Disrobing and all. But that's done more in the spring, I believe. And you did leave out the dancing three-legged stool. The lambs in flapping bed-sheets, yes, I'll be waiting for them. Lady Godiva, I hope your hair will keep you warm. I'll keep brandy for you. JCH	2006-10-28 10:14:53
a fire of yes	Joanne M Uppendahl	Clearly the best poem of yours I've had the pleasure to read, Joanne. Without doubt the best around here of late. You'll have my vote this month, be assured. With an eye that can find the life in a bare desert, your grand ode to Fall in its remarkable impressionist vision, finds the astounding beauty to the most remarkable of all Nature's changes. From the start, the imagery is superb with originality. "The green fern leans/like wings on the path" drips luscious assonance and arouses expectations for the reader that are soon delivered with more than simple satisfaction. Had we not paid proper notice, homage, to the autumnal coloring before, we do now. A Fire of Yes, most interesting application to a title, finds those magical impressions of color and play with elements of even moonlight suggesting the next phase of change, winter. "Painted them/with glimmer coats to sleep/until winter/ claps them closer" is as fitting a last line as your first is a first. Poems that appreciate season and find such organic meaning, even to winter, are those to which our lives best relate. And to which the will to go on finds a most enduring boost. You have come across a most interesting quality that I particularly like. Your light introduction of the moon, first in, "each one a moon/on a stem/ before the/branch-elbowed sky", then the "moonrise..." is a device that brings up its own emphasis. And that I find a reflection to mine own appreciation of the growing stillness we evidence as the approach to winter lends its own gallery like feature to the presentation the moon grants with light whose warmth is purely impressionistic. And in this you succeed in better defining one genre coming together with another. It doesn't get much better than this. JCH	2006-10-26 05:27:58
I Live Outdoors dot nut	Ellen K Lewis	Delightful, Ellen. We lived once as children finding so much sense of self- management in a big box disgarded after delivering a TV set or refrigerator. It was our own, determined by us where to be placed, decorated with whatever we might choose...untidy or tidy as we had whim to decide. We, if we haven't suffered major stroke or hidden ourselves behind addiction, all retain those moments, just as do we the first Christmas tree, the first Halloween trapse. The RV is just that box on wheels...perhaps even better, in the time transpired, the grasping patterns woven into stifling adulthood. It can, as it does with you in this poem, be a song to adventurous childhood. And to the discerning it is not encapsulated by the cliche', "childish" but to the appreciation of one still open to possibilities, of where to go, and who new to take up with. Sublime with youth. JCH	2006-10-25 09:42:31
Rapping	Dellena Rovito	Perhaps, my dear, but perhaps not. "Rapping" is a gerund adulterated by a usually most tiresome musical style. The parallels there, to your theme would be interesting. I'm not certain mankind holds progression well in time, either. We slide backwards so easily. Each time coming back a little less adventurous...or so it seems. But you are indeed right about the drudging wait and that appearance of drum beat. Although the experience of hours can sometimes seem as moments and moments can sometimes seem as hours. But then I have even argued that for some, time can even wait...much against the famous saying. JCH	2006-10-23 13:47:00
Illusionary	Dellena Rovito	Those coming aware are children of innocence just as much as those entering their first year of school. With a very tight and traditional rhyme pattern, you enjoin the reader to the perplexity of discovering just how little we partake in our own destiny/formation. I might have broken the form just a little just to further suggest a newly acquired distaste for the same trends that mold us form can represent. But we all rebel in our own ways. JCH	2006-10-21 07:29:36
Very Bad Things	marilyn terwilleger	Marilyn, what terrible imagery to apply to our own sweet little children!!! teh heh Well placed rhyme, with its scheme well crafted. Close observance of meter and a mutually appreciated tribute to my favorite time of year. If only I didn't live on a cul de sac, so far back that children seldom bang at my door with jack-o-lantern. The few that do, however, get loaded up on what the others have missed. There's somekind of metaphor in there somewhere. Some of the largest hawks I have seen, perhaps they are eagles, have begun roosting in my cottonwood at night. They sound like fox running through briars when they take off. That's not going to help much, either. JCH	2006-10-20 09:55:46
Whispers	marilyn terwilleger	You've written this poem before, my dear, just when standing by the shore, instead of owl's habitat. Only slight difference in the endings...where a "tell" is to be found. This ending has a most favored delicacy, delicious in its lightness (doing honor to double intende.) "Garments of mist" is very good imagery, but the sobriety found throughout is arresting and such as "last breath", even alarming. You and Joanne are beginnng to worry me. JCH	2006-10-20 09:32:11
Pollen	Mark Andrew Hislop	I'm going to share, what I haven't before, on my theory for a new movement among poets. Because, in that theater this poem would find enduring success. Let's call this, the poet's theater of anti-form. As has, I'm certain, been noted, I tend to mock form. Am I lazy? Am I just mean and nasty? (of course, and I'd like to state, these questions do not cover all possibility for I might certainly be lazy, mean and nasty on other scores...if not this one.) Be that as it may. No, here I'm not being lazy, mean or nasty. I taking on the problem all poets have if they address how cumbersome form can become and how it can detract from the beauty of the poem by making the poet look more contriving than needs be. A good example is a poem just posted that even goes so far as to place its refrain at the beginning of several stanzas. As if some magical incantation were being performed that could turn its soapy romanticism into something more. All because we, as poets, are not clearly defining anything about our genre for this new and original niche we must carve out for ourselves. Form/structure can have tremendous use to a poet, no question of it. But, and I say this retaining all regard for the superb craftsmanship so many traditionalists have employed with it, there are places to go by disregarding it when appropriate to context. In fact, leveling it sometimes in order to "pronounce" the significance elsewhere. You don't know what you started by just beginning new lines in this wonderful little piece all over the place, "drunk with it". Superb, Mark. I hope you will work on a collection of your work under some common theme or regional emphasis and seek a publisher. It is time. JCH	2006-10-19 08:26:31
Untitleable	Mark Andrew Hislop	Yes, rather "untitleable" than untitiled, a distinction not lost upon me. Had you placed the closing stanza, however, in the place of the first, "God made nature for weaklings; the rest can have all the beauty that money can buy," it would have been entirely another matter. And MSS could have accused you of my style of didacticism. Of course I would have been gratified. In this work among your own wonderful style of original imagery in abundance, one example of complex imagery I like the most is in the line, "his mutilating (so suggestive of mutating) looks like perfection, alchemy that anodizes my leaden terrain with a golden lustre." Too easily the reader could mistake this line for just another cliche' treatment of an old man and his legendary philosopher's stone, but here it is much more. To fully grasp this one must know that the alchemist's credo is, what virtue is found in the intent is achieved in the result. The power of expectation, in other words. At least applied to good works. The clue to the bizarre purposes opposing nature, this feature among modern times has taken, is additionally suggested by the tone of the poem and by the opening lines, somewhat suggesting the self-indulgent permissiveness of drug induced stupor and the objectification of appearance (sexual attraction) bears sublimation dubiously. An understatement. You have here, I hope, intended more than reflection of passing mood mixed with observation, but sought more astute penetration of the human condition. Thus you would no longer simply wallow in the mess, but rise above it. JCH	2006-10-18 10:16:44
Sailing to Mazatlan	Joanne M Uppendahl	I think, Joanne, you have written your, "Stopping by Woods On A Snowy Evening." No less than Frost, perhaps more, your added intensity with this poem, touches the reader in more ways, me in particular. For I know that intimacy we can come to feel with the sea and its inviting escape. And in ways you show here, although not in the fuller perspective you have portrayed as a woman. At such times, "home" is the anchor pulling us back from finding out how much in accord we are elementally with the sea. And if the undying might persist better elsewhere. Had we not those pesky "promises to keep/And miles to go before I (we) sleep." Sometimes it is just a thread, but then, perhaps too, things may only for the moment appear, "too far to reach again." Be in no hurry to find out. Removing options isn't what it's about either. Interesting parallelism at work here, don't you think? JCH	2006-09-16 12:29:18
A cinquain poem	marilyn terwilleger	Marilyn, your feminine beauty speaks here. The trust that such resignation requires is only earned by fierce labor on the part of us men, but its worth is incalculable. Such a thing required the word invention, completion. Wonderfully, in the symbiosis of metaphor, requiring my search for a dictionary, just as such regard sets its own task...the lovely way women have of asking, are we worth it? Yes, you are. JCH	2006-09-16 08:20:43
Beyond the Reef	Medard Louis Lefevre Jr.	It is good to see you again, Medard. Human contact is not fulfilling. That our moments of shared pleasure are so fleeting, might be why we develop such obsession with sex, and attempt to create some form of concreted delusion out of what is becoming more and more emotionally failing. Today, as far as intimacy, the carnal act is no more satisfying that way than a handshake. If one takes away parental devotion to children (and it is seeping away) home has utterly no meaning. "Or sail away" is the sad euphemistic option we seldom avoid taking instead of reaching each other meaningfully. While the "reef" is the social barrier we construct (or allow constructed)between ourselves and our diminishing hopes to really connect. What is left? Perhaps sharing discovery. Of that, there is indeed much to be had. And perhaps from it, a new intimacy. There is a stark sincerity to everything of yours I've read. I know of no other way to answer it. JCH	2006-09-09 07:04:14
this	Shannon M Bloomquist	Quite a charming poem, Shannon. A very neat way to make your acquaintance. You have a talent in how you put your lines together and with the unusual rhyming you employ. Having no affectation in the least and an almost too casual way of relating us all into the warmth we feel in company of others we like, you attach us to "this", a concept better, perhaps, left no better elucidated. Anymore than would be that of brotherhood, felt in the most intimate way. It is so much more when it is not confined to family, yes it is, this is. JCH	2006-09-05 16:54:03
Crap	Medard Louis Lefevre Jr.	What I gather, Medard, is this poem and the one just before it do not beg for critiques of themselves but of you. To that end, what I address here is meant. Your plight (highly detectable) is from disgust and disappointment. Only understandable, within life's experience of mystery and wonder, in a frame of reference that you have "quit" more out of resignation, than displeasure with fortune. Perhaps, Medard, you rely too much on what other men have told you of God, of the Universe, and of the mechanics of how existance fits together. In reality, these are wonders and the truth about them grows merit to living with each revelation. You may have simply been looking for revelation in the wrong places and relied on idiots to speak on matters upon which highly suspect "credentials" provide them false assurances they are fit to speak. If, Medard, you might look at resolving just a few of the more significant anomaly that persist in this little neighborhood of your galaxy, you will come to better appreciate how organic and revitalized you life can become. Let me suggest your first such assignment: How is it this little globe can survive being shot at by its fusion star when it is known Coronal Mass Ejections should decimate one side of earth each 17 years? Take this on and we can discuss it at length when you have done the research. Perhaps, you might care to travel a little bit to see things for yourself, others avoid, on the matter of what evidence exists of off-earth intelligence? But I jump ahead. JCH	2006-08-13 07:22:58
Voyeur	marilyn terwilleger	It is an interesting device, to project a point of view within and without (title and ending) that is that of the poet/writer. Even to have something of an action core (as in a play) come to rest itself in finality upon the same. Voyeur in every way. The phrase, "Blazed upon" is abstract while the rest of the poem is not. Such a thing hits the reader like a kink in a bicycle chain. I would suggest changing that. Other than that, the poem is an expressionist water color itself and has the artistry to match. The imagery created in the mind while reading it is wonderful and expansive. I like it very much. JCH	2006-08-09 17:35:02
Train Conductor	Fowler Trask	Has the Angel of Death become job weary? Some might view this as a very dark little poem indeed. For me, it is delightful. Demonstrating the reverie of a very thoughtful individual, one long eupehmism worth. I hope the rest appreciate this for it is definitely provoking and I regard it highly. JCH	2006-07-18 20:49:19
Fantasy	marilyn terwilleger	I like this poem much more than the other. It is like an exercise to bring justification to the conclusion and to the inspired, yet somewhat juxtoposed use of putting "colossal" and "tranquility" together. The "brown paper wrapper" is a social indictment of a culture emmersed in cliche' while "ribboned air" and "Wag as if on water" are imagery at its best. You have the ability to make something at first seem simplistic, only to end in biting us at our backdoor. That's an interesting quality. JCH	2006-07-16 12:58:41
Dawning	marilyn terwilleger	In a limited context, Marilyn, the poem reflects the mood of disappointment. For there actually IS much "stupendous" going on AND, manytimes, "unseen". Some of these things I have attempted to introduce. Even in reply to Chris's sophomoric little exercise. What's remarkable about that is not one single question was raised over documented evidence that mind existed extraneous to brain. Isn't that stupendous? And, didn't its import go by unseen? I could go on all day with such examples. So, in subtsance I have to disagree with your poem's conclusion, but you do appreciate well the disappointment manytimes felt when we confine ourselves to the perceptions of others. Remember, you asked me to examine this poem. I'm not out looking for trouble, as so many would like to believe. JCH	2006-07-16 11:50:20
Within a scale	Thomas H. Smihula	You know, Smihula, I never realized how much your "poetry" sucks before? Although you do get some consideration for trying to hold up the pissing post for dear old Arnie. Getting back to your stumbling efforts, I usually don't comment on or visit such excrement as this but when the "Muse" has been prostituted to this degree, it's almost mandatory. Yes, I did say I would not critique voluntarily. However, I feel, in your own indefagitable way, you asked for this. Now, Grasshopper, you just might dust the neglect off your dictionary and look up the word, churl. Combine that with "womanish" and you have the imaginative graphics of an overfed self-indulgent wearing a rubber nose (and in the background a nice lady packing out the door with her belongings) and one big parasitic worm hanging out the ass. Now that you've graduated from assassinating poems superior to yours (most are)to attempting to do the same to people's opinion of others, you must invest in an idiot's guide to defamation. You might find it where you obtained that copy of, An Idiot's Guide to Poetry Pretense. Have a nice day, JCH	2006-07-03 08:54:43
Now that I am dead	Mark Andrew Hislop	I am reminded of Don Marquis, this is such a frolic for thought. But there is exceedingly powerful imagery that makes me wonder what you might know of the ancients. The line, "a mother mine her child with her breast's spike" touches on what the Spartans, specifically, sought to adjure, i.e., a child acquiring any form of dependence beyond what was absolutely necessary. For this reason children were turned out shortly after they could walk, to fend for themselves. Stealing was the main way they could survive but if caught, they would receive brutal punishment. Almost inconceivable, the Battle of Thermopole is no fabrication, 100 Spartan soldiers held off tens of thousands of Persians for days at that Pass. Lycurgus, the Spartan Law Giver, said something truely remarkable when pressed about the short length of Spartan swords and the smallness of their shields. "My arm makes up the extra length" and "I do not fight with my shield". Manhood can be the grandest of all achievements. We like to think sports can give it, but that is just the beginning. Accountability is a precious aspect of manhood, and I am always impressed with the instincts your poetry portrays by adopting a clear expectation of things to be accountable. Even from the grave. JCH	2006-06-29 20:57:48
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