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Displaying Critiques 411 to 460 out of 460 Total Critiques.
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Poem TitlePoet NameCritique Given by James C. HorakCritique Date
Spanish MossKenneth R. PattonAn incredible poem, Kenneth, clearly the best to grace TPL in a very long time. The last of this caliber was Woman Combing Her Hair. I't didn't get the month's win...sadly, perhaps, because I raved about it so much. Although I would like very much to toot the horn about this splendid work, it's up to you if I do. It's very frustrating to see something as splendid as this passed over simply out of spite. But then Thomas Smihula doesn't seem to be making much of an appearance this month. It was his machinations that cost Woman Combing its rightful recognition. Do endeavor to keep up this quality of poeming, it offers a pleasure beyond words to so many. JCH2006-06-27 14:07:32
Secretsmarilyn terwillegerI like poems that may seem simplistic at first but have threads running off to interesting places. This lovely one is framed by your glimpsing out from shore upon shallows, presumably. Then the end places your glance, "across the deep", not at where the depth of the water greatens, but where your footprints are. The device here stimulates the reader to appreciate that your message is more of the setting as secondary to the deep thought process it has triggered. Which brings us far more closer to appreciating the line, "the very undertow memory is made of". Excellent, but if you wish to avoid dangling a participle, you could write, the very undertow taunting memory (or some other modifier suitable to your tone.) All-in-all, however, the poem is successful and enjoyable to read. Footprints in sand almost conjure imagery, don't they? JCH2006-06-23 09:45:38
LandminesMark Andrew HislopIt saddens me to see one so talented, intellegent, intellectual, gifted... capable of copious display of original imagery and constant exhibition of poetic soul, the least bit into self-deprecation. This is a wonderful poem except for the little "note" for which you've poisoned it. Mark, you've commented about your therapy sessions, your undetailed problems (I might guess with bouts of depression or whatever.) Let me be brief. At the first signs of such "problems" someone in your life, and I would have had I been your big brother, taken you out to a bar or sand lot and shoved you into the biggest, meanest bully I could find. If you tried to get away, I would threaten to beat your ass if you did not face them. Yes, you would probably end needing a little patching up...but I promise you there would have been an end forever to these "problems" and self- doubt would no longer plague you....ever again. All civilized cultures have rites of passage and just about all have elements like the one I suggested. But as we, as a culture, grow more and more "sophisticated" we adopt a different kind of savagery. Your poem detects that, doesn't it. So do the math. Blow that fucking therapist off. And I wouldn't use sixth millennium references. Ethnic timeline differences confuse computers. JCH2006-06-23 08:28:07
LegacyMark Andrew HislopAgain, a poem sustaining intensity, with a potential for power so far beyond the pablum too frequently served here. You have a natural ability to go just far enough...yet not too far. Don't feel so obliged to the classical illusion, it comes on as if you wanted your ticket punched to be permitted and it serves little. You have a much grander stage than that Rome and Greece envisioned. Your play of imagery and illusion is gifted as you toy with the dissimilar in ways to question the formal. This is one of your strengths and has always made me partial to you as a candidate for poetic excellence. The poems stands on its own, but I see potentials a little more work might enhance. Things to say...and places to go with them. But that might be another poem. JCH2006-05-15 21:30:25
COFFEE CUPSNancy Ann HemsworthThe coffee cup is today's euphemism for what develops around its routine, like a star around which planets play. You find so many interesting parallels with the day to day life and that routine, borne out well by your imagery and the provocation to memory it comes to rest upon, that, delightfully sensual. "Void of coffee; void of you" develops the final focus well, and the final lift is as expectant as the caffein just taken. An enjoyable poem. JCH 2006-03-09 15:27:55
StayMark Andrew HislopYou portray well the bittersweet aspect of marriage/love. A confinement always tested by the loss of freedom it engenders versus its offerings of sweetness not always more than transient. And so we sublimate...yours intellectually, spiritually. Something we did not always have to do to hold together home and hearth, for the benefit of children, children who should always represent ultimate priority and so seldom do, anymore. And so we sublimate...yours so more aspiringly than that of others, doing so much more than simply to pray. I hope the lady is remarkable and so much more constant for it. And sees such pleas as unnecessary. But the times do not progress such virtue well. And I should not gauge your experiences against mine. The children, however, are worth sacrifices easy to yield. That should always carry the day...perhaps that should have something to do with what you say. JCH2006-03-07 12:56:50
My Sometime ShepherdMark Andrew HislopWhen I first read about Lycurgus, the Spartan Law-giver, in Plutarch's Lives, his was, to me, the most endearing of all inspiration a young boy could have. In ways he had helped "spread my wings" that, I'm certain, even today bear fruit. Your first line and verse express that the mentor to which you're enamoured is mortal, of so much more depth than the god-heads we erect so much more superciliously. Immediately, the read becomes an adventure, instead of simply an expectation of redundance. "Impervious to ordinary gall" is a splendid way of characterizing this individual and your self-gauge is commentary cutting swath both upon the poem as semi-narrative and personal. Poetic license at its best. The affiliation between you both becomes co-conspiracy when you end the poem with, "honour him with this imprinted crime" simply because (and all reviewers should expect sole words in poems to have these distinctive meanings)you use the modifier, "this" instead of, his. The quality is always IN a viewer when it has this quality for by merely appreciating you observe indisputably a value to the emulation. This cannot successfully be except in poetic rendering without some degree of self-deprecation... hence the co-conspiracy element. Dissuaded elegantly enough, as you do in another successful poem. Creating, again, a quandary of sorts over my struggle to be fair in my voting allotment. Crap. JCH2006-03-06 11:52:04
How to press a buttonMark Andrew HislopYou grasp the thing, the "first blood" principle. Thank you, I thought another element of accountable manhood had declined to vanishing. You revive enough of it to matter. Yes, opinion making is like lobotomy. Every bit like it. The liars know that so well. Military strikes are ALWAYS a gamble...whether they'll be taken as justified (against cities, how could they be?) or as an act of aggression against the world. "croupier", again, well taken. It is a toss in the air, decided by nothing..."Tea leaves counsel". Classy. A most superlative image, undresses so much, "Ink extracted from butterflies,/hydrates a mirage." Drop the next line, it is like a neon pointer to a rare orchid. Yes, tears. The best thing you've done this month and where the bulk of my voting weight will go. About friggin time you started aiming that gifted "abstraction" device' you have going at some inevitable conclusions. JCH2006-03-05 10:31:01
Black is the knifeMark Andrew HislopYour use of alternating refrain here is interestingly effective. Ending with two, "My tongue, maker of the shattered window", a highly developed way of bringing this poem to an end with the focus you want. Although there has been so little discussion among TPL critics of such devices (I think I might have been the first to broach parallelism,) the elemental qualities are just as important as structure and form. With your use of refrain we see another interesting permutation, progression, as you go from, "So black the knife that I lay in shadow", to, "Blackened the knife that I lay in shadow", to, "Black was the knife that I sped from shadow". Of course, the state of being implied in, "My tongue, maker of the shattered widow" would not work with that and you are clever for discerning that. This permutation allows for a sense of action and causes the reader to aprehend your "knife" to be perhaps more than metaphor. Which, I would take it, penetration, even in the less physical sense, is. Your use of language, at times, appreciates Elizabethan, with the lines, "Eyeless remorse, though more slow, was more deft." almost detached from modern precept. No flaw, however, it has no splendor such as the Elizabethan-like, "What shall reveal how chaff, how grain are cleft?" where you hit meanings that are struck so well on even more modern cord. The penetration to truth is this poem's superlative universal metaphor. You obtain vast slaps at ordinary comforts enough to disturb complacence with such challenges to the modlin, as, "Deep blackness of daylight, onyx pillow" wherein the reader ponders contradiction by this hiccup to reason, made to look more for the subtle than the less earned. Something I enjoy doing myself. Only this time, you have moved much closer to providing a "message to the world" you are obliged to obtain for your endearing audience. JCH2006-03-01 10:17:32
DaisiesMark Andrew HislopI think, more than anything else, this poem is commentary on you, as both poet and person. It's significance to me is that it examples nothing else by you I've read. That alone is the "kneeling down to earth" I used not too long ago in a poem I submitted here. A poem whose meanings were a little too lightly tapped. I will see that yours here are not. Diane should be assured of your love, if not by your day-to- day affections and mannerisms, then most certainly by the expression of that love, so wholly out of character and style with the intellectualizing and wonderous exploration of your other work I have read. Here you "decline" to a grace and poise so many of the very best of poets have not, poets unable to free themselves from the shackles of their own making...to express uniquely to that which IS of highest priority. Like someone elegant in debate, dropping to a whisper to be heard better. A daisy is good choice, refraining from plucking it petals such a wonderful excursion beyond the expected. Again you resort to the unique in order to better convey, to (pardon the expression) sublimate your love. You would not even allow the question, possessing the flower en tota, making your own standard for its metaphor. Not picked, plucked, but grown "for" the examination much closer of the thing we would so often bring to embrace less caringly. Again, an incredible extension beyond the mundane. "I throw them to the ocean and you're at sea", a line of the most elegant simplicity and one in which your poem nestles close to for its continued imagery of delicate regard. This is so much more than a romantic love poem. JCH2006-02-24 09:22:19
KeyboardMark Andrew HislopYes, what we have done with this instrument! I take this poem rather personally, foul fiend. Reminds me of how an astute lady that once frequented TPL reacted to a poem I submitted concerning a certain demon (actually a little bit inside us all) that was somewhat less subtle than she would have liked. After some degree of badgering from her I silenced the matter by simply replying, "What?...you want a politically correct demon?" And so it is, the human condition (in this case, the King, I take it) is best when kicked around a little. but pissed on? Are you still after my "tattered" little poem? I hope we haven't "ruinated" the land passed salvaging. But then someone had to give the King something to think about. He was starting to watch Oprah. Too giddy to be offended, JCH 2006-02-18 07:10:35
If I Could Tell Him the TruthTheresa H JohnsonTheresa, I must start by saying that I am not religious. Though I have belief in God, I observe no conventional path of faith to Him. Suffice it to say, I'm a self-acknowledged agnostic. That does not mean, however, I don't respect the faith of others and that I don't appreciate their sincerity when I see it expressed. You poem is that of the faithful concerned about the plight of one you view on the verge of being lost to an irredeemable act of suicide. I may not share that view, but I am impressed with the purity of concern your poem delivers. Your imagery in, "brick and mortar/glass pains (panes)and silicon from/times past (passed) and, "in (if) the wind of God would break his fall", transcends your frame of reference to the human concerns attendant upon all mankind by those of conscience. This, and other elements in your poem set it apart from evangelical attempts at conversion and permit broader context than condemnation alone allow. Coming to your highly interesting line, "perhaps he'd understand that choice to live/can't be made by any god.", your allowance to respect free will brings your poem much closer to being, "a message to the world". Thus giving dimension to the "truth" you would share with this poor soul. I appreciate your frame of reference and I am impressed with how you have personally refined your Christian belief to a purity as far from self-righteousness as I think one can become. In my book, that IS Christianity. Your poem has a warmth and concern that reflects this. JCH2006-02-16 10:06:31
The Outside, InMark Andrew HislopI've just submitted an anti-Romantic piece. Yours here is anti-sensual. Poems like this are excursions into realms not often made, but that advance outlooks and better define them with the challenge they make to complaisance. Hear, Mark, you test the difference between abstract and abstruse. "sole unshoe sensation", "how vision grew by telescope", "May water blow the rower", "a peak's a trough", come to comply well with the stated intention each stanza ending refrain so adequately reflects upon the title, "to make the inside bring the outside in." Added to this is well placed unity of theme in the lines, 'where everything can be conceived anew' and "making harmony of the warring kin." Like me, you are after the lethargic with a vengence. Exceedingly well taken. Certainly a poem to task those who habitually give shallow readings. But, my clever friend, inversion is a tool for discovery only so much as each presses themself to acquire such understanding as to see the underbelly of reality. One view upon a thing is inadequate. Without this grasp, your poem is another pearl cast before swine. But then perceptive critics bring so many to understanding and, with that consideration, your poem could possibly become, "a message to the world". It would not be the first successful poem brought to an adulating audience that way. JCH 2006-02-16 09:30:40
The Village of LearMark Andrew HislopNow just what purpose do you have in mind coining, "manufactories"? One offers a superb poem and tethers it to such an artless embellishment?!!! Something's turning the wrong way in Aussieland and it's not just the flush in commodes. I don't ask for much and when I do I always offer more. Make only this one repair, after striking this poem from the site; repost it and I will, I promise, throw it my voting weight. You will get the critique it will, thus, deserve and I will have done my part in saving it from oblivion. Shame, shame, shame. JCH 2006-02-14 10:28:52
This is not the placeMark Andrew HislopTwo schools of history persist, one denoting, the times make the man; the other, great men make the times. Your "place" however pertains as much to one as to the other. Suggesting interdimensionalism, language is at risk...a thing you profoundly address in the first stanza. "One must go back in time", to find the appreciation for richness in language indeed. And though your allusion to Orpheus is well taken, Orpheus as poet and you as poet may both own time. Both the past and future. We are not always "well met" by choosing to borrow richness from the past, but we may stir others toward the same portal. Poems are not always fully realized on first reading, but if the poet is good, the tantalizing meaning is felt and not abandoned. It is not that we must agree, poems to be good don't require acquiescence. But they must arouse valid debate and challenge differences. I don't like the word "progress", not in any historical context. Not anymore than I like, "fact". Progress suggests advance and nothing is linear about time (hence the word has no meaning.) "Fact" suggests truth and it is not. If only there was an implication or sardonic slap at the illusion we make of "progress" here. "When love is least" is a highly adept use of poetic language and suits well the summation of the second stanza. "That times embrace the times embracing them" is an interesting serialism verging on an appreciation of time a certain John Dunne (envisioned unified field theory before Einstein) portrayed in his, The Serial Universe. No, this may not be the place, Mark, but you may not need a place. Mind is greater than time, place, event and recognizes no boundaries when it works well. Not when someone of your ability possesses it. Snap out of it. Every feature of a successful poem...it just doesn't apply to intellect. The times needn't make the man...unless we lose our libraries. You asked for the argument and you got it. At least your powerful poem did. JCH2006-02-13 19:17:04
Clove CemeteryBrandon Gene PetitWe wrestle with finality all our lives, half-alert always to preparing to die, toying with notions of alternatives, preyed upon by charlatans laying claim to reservations for our ticket to heaven. A realization making import with your, "trace of naivety" and why we harbor even the graves of our dead with such an embraced, "Leaving the dead to their sober retreat", binds us all into a common fascination to entertain not all of anyone dies. Your first two lines juxtapose the dead conversing with the wind, with "dormant abodes of the living". Along with dormant late fall or winter, your setting adds to a play upon life and its sometimes dormancy, to death with its feet still in the world. One might suppose your attitude in, "My name not found among the assortment" to be somewhat disdainful of life, in conjunction with the afore considerations and to wonder at what this, "catalyst soon to awaken" might express. Life after death? Tracing meaning with this interpretation gives your line, "I'm somewhat dwarfed among the allinace" a more clearly understood meaning, that perhaps life achieves more readily in death sometimes, than in life. Sadly, too often the plight of poet and artist. Your reader is left with thoughtful contexts for revisiting the past and its fallen without the modlin applied, and without the usual overdone similes labored to cliche'. Polished, tight verse structure, no more homage to rhyme than is needed (that might otherwise distract from the somber tone,) and a sustained imagery that parallels death with season, resignation, and one's view of life. Publishable poetry. JCH2006-02-11 14:32:06
A Vanishing at the ShoreThomas Edward WrightWell kept within divergent imagery and allusive metaphor, your poem speads gossamer sheen just like the image of a winged rainbow you borrowed from MSS. Yes, we are not at best, penned down to crusty absolutes and pointless designations. "a boat bobbing seven leagues from home" is close enough. Do "water and sand work against instinct" or is it merely to consider inglorious, aspects of change. This only, the cause of precious memory? Regardless, it is delightful to see your extraordinary Muse pricked by another, then you willingly share in that run, "Footprints in the sand". Always stay so young. JCH 2006-02-07 16:04:10
Evening EyesBrandon Gene PetitThe Poe influence here is dramatic, Brandon. You've set the gothic tone just about as well, and not gone too far with the pathetique. You display, as you have in the other poems of yours I've read, a personal style and care with words that shows regard for craftsmanship. Don't use the word, "dorm". In the diminutive, it breaks with the tone of the gothic style and brings context a little too much into your own personal world. Let this poem come to amount to something more grandiose and it very well will. Those of us who have been enough in candlelit circumstance know the apparitions imagined with shadow play from candlelight. Your line (suggested slight modification not-with-standing,) "Fuzzy black amoebic shapes contorting here within the dorm" is superlatively appreciated and one of the best images you create. The inline syllabic purity of the line, "Deep inside my humble shrine of burning woood and bleeding wax" is assonance; followed by the internal rhyme found in, "Silence plays a violin to hypnotize my mental foes". Would not, Mourning winds soon join in, instead of, "Winds outside will soon join in..." be better in keeping with the quality of the rest of the stanza? One can safely assume, after all, the winds are outside. You final line is an absolute conquest of my own regard, so well have you placed me inside your poem..."by the sea". I could little enjoy Poe more. JCH2006-02-07 11:33:20
Australia Day Revised To Comply With New ...Mark Andrew HislopMark, you employ a very clever mechanism here, just satirical enough to approach the topic of encroaching government with enough craft to dispel the prepared arguments. Quite often, that is the only way one has to combat media apologists and hirelings for government policy promotion. Did I say media? The parallel with the sacrifice of burnt offering is carried to a very adroit conclusion with the last line, "When you Smell Burning Flesh, the World is Ready for Consumption." You interesting way of using capitals for words used in sound byte phrases employed in public image making is consistant with the use of headlines to imprint emphasis. Your reader is well on the road to viewing his media bombardment with a more jaundiced eye. Well he should. You have portrayed well how slogan making and fear mongering are the new orders-of-the-day, substituted for an holiday permutated into something else. Something sinister. Henry Fielding would be proud. Significant and successful. JCH2006-02-06 18:36:45
The bad placeMark Andrew HislopI would call your concern here to be over something slightly more than writer's block, perhaps the concern of poet with Muse, Muse examined a little too closely, shied by the scrutiny? I think She is the same for all, mercurial when threatened to be confined by stare, granting clarity only on Her own capricious terms. Ever fleeting once that moment of sheer wonder is delivered, as if some beckoning by another is more formidable to Her than your devotion, your inexhaustible grattitude. Can we ever be certain She remains for us throughout this brief candle's dimming light? No, we cannot. One wonders what demon Milton paid, and at what price, to have his Muse attendent upon him so long. A splendid poem. Only, and I mean only, improved by your substitute of something other than "funny" following "Bunny". Imagery and the stark empathy you evoke with companion poets is what carries this splendidly delivered penetration into all our darkest fears of going to a dry well for water. Don't try to trade in any way its intensity on a late-in-the-day lunge at rhyme. To even think you might need it is a mistake, and a teeny bit tawdry. I'll pay the 3 dollars to have you change this. Then my esteem for it can show in my vote. JCH2006-02-04 04:35:28
substratusRegis L ChapmanI am old to this journey, my youthful aspirant. I have seen men attempt to gauge a world without evil, the greatest folly of all. I have seen men deny there are others better...coming to believe, in all things, the greatest self-deceit. Witness those monks who tempt the spine to behave as would a cobra...solely to enter the abandon of woman in coitus, ending in lewd sneer that will not leave their face. There are perfections, but the will must remain poised in the nobility of wholesome intention to realize models that persist past illusion. Otherwise nothing is manifested, brought from indealization into unperplexed being. Men tasting virtue as well as love from those that come to their bed. Women unscornful of their lover's intentions. Only the things remarkable to discovery give life value. All else is practiced child's play, the drawing of breath to lungs untrained to hold air. You are wrong to grant polarity to mind, to sublimate the tear between consciousness and its broken brother. Only in unity of both minds is gain obtained. Only in unified consciousness can the models the mind is able to contain be manifested. You are taught dichotomy to make you more willing to yield to enslavement, to laud such things as ambivalence and loss of personal accountabilities. To accept the yoke of knowing one thing and living another. All you pursue is aimed solely at making you better to serve another. I pray you see this before your life force is spent to any degree such that your promise of pursuit more worthwhile to your self is much lessened. For when you come to finally be on the right path, your wait will be patient on the student that prepares for the master realizing that one is no more found by looking than is a good wife. JCH 2006-02-02 23:04:57
Soon, a YearThomas Edward WrightPoets have long thought the expanse of a tree's life made good context for reaching beyond the limitations of our own durations. So many marks in life's progression can be tied to events harbored near or under that wonderful spreading oak in the backyard or the elm that skirts the curb of the street. Hardly any family event is remiss in having snapshots that include an interceeding bough or strong gridded trunk included. This "mystical math", how we measure that, "difference a dozen moons make;" can find, "more than death could take away". Obtaining this, you progress the measure of life's progress in its own enduring qualities, paralleling the stoic existence of a tree with the unended event the memory can make of those, now, timeless moments...wherein "one's inch" becomes not only, perhaps, "another's mile", possibly even an etermity. Soon, a Year, like Everyman's identity, and Whitman's woods, never an end. By the way, Thomas, I am thoroughly disgusted that people here would presume to address critiques and yet ignore the superiority of your, A Woman Combing, in order to play games. There isn't any excuse for this. JCH2006-02-02 16:42:02
CockroachMark Andrew HislopIt is deeply gratifying to me to see you perfect a poetic style to the extent you have here, Mark. This poem is not to be neglected for it observes one of the richest uses to which the genre can be applied. Imagery is not merely an enhancement of tone, theme, pictures in the mind, etc., it is away to help the reader experience "rediscovery" of perception, truth, emotion, sense...it IS to make renewel. You have always displayed this ability but, before, been far to haphazard with its use, more often than not bordering on abstraction. When you needn't. There are three things I look for a poem to achieve in order to accept it as being at this level of accomplishment: it has the tightness in structure and theme to be unified by its end, into meaning; it offers more to the reader than would prose, through imagery and mankind's collective desire for cadence; and it possesses an individuality on its own merit to be apart anything else thought like it. You are able to finally harness what brings about the wonderous fourth, to artfully juxtapose the dissimilar so that imagery you offer contains a depth expansive to mental workings you arouse. Your line, "An elephant/sense of cemetary/brings it all about,/this species of walking/bone, blackening out. As your reader copes with subliminal conjuring of elephant and cockroach placed into the same context, all in-between becomes the poet's playground. (Too bad you could not see me doing the same thing when I task a reader to find the ACTUAL difference between reckoning the end of time with a pile of rocks and trying to measure a lifetime's volume of piss...as astute observation on how skewed are our sublimations.) So, I'm not going to comment on what I see clicking in that last verse/stanza until you reread MY poem. I'll just say this, you got something from my modest little offering whether you realize it or not. Slightly perturbed, JCH 2006-01-31 08:43:54
A void worth all the troubleMark Andrew HislopIf a poem cannot be dissected, placing one line apart from the rest; if it cannot be illustrated meaningfully when tampered with so and a piece taken to taste some common essence, it contains a lineage of unmitigatable truth paralleling this poem's driving core. You, Mark, have found the awesome distinction between lineage and heritage, and the void in-between. Where both challenge each other, and where redundance can become a law unto itself. Primogeniture was/is the fatalist's tool, self-deceived into a thought of overcoming oblivion. Part and parcel of the embedded evil notion of opposing change merely for the sake of opposing change. Status quo at all costs. America has grown a whole class of pathological egotists that would overcome evolution with one carefully marketed device after another, just as they would place the fortunes of whole families on the potential of an eldest son, mindlessly. That would replace the value in being with the nothingness of disbelief, elevating nothing more than longevity to Godhood. And so it is within us, a scourge, "an eternity red raw...", finality without a beginning. A great poem but written for too limited an audience. Preaching to the choir, you have not evoked the necessary triggers to reach "the world". And they need this breath to the brain most. JCH 2006-01-25 09:17:31
GodlinessGerard Andrew GeigerA most high-minded offering, Gerard. Indisputably. You're going to draw the fire, however, I do...for writing declamation instead of poetry. But you could keep all this power and wonderful connectivity and depth and brilliant insight with poetic language. You have enough here to show you need not be so sparing with it. A most beautiful circumlocution, to detach from your opening statement to the introspection of your last one. It establishes a very poetic unity and is able to take the poet away from charges of "being to full of one's self". Let me show you what I mean by poetizing rather than declaiming: Let's take this statement, "The irony is that this collective power, /which could be used for any purpose desired by the collective will,/ would of itself be a god-like quality." Would you miss any of these lines import if, instead, you wrote: What God would sit above mankind if man were kind to man? And placed together a common will that upon a God placed man. What do you think, Gerard? JCH2006-01-24 22:06:34
The Early HoursBrandon Gene PetitA poem whose scope is simplistically held within the sensory confines of poet reacting in a kind of reverie with familiar environ enhanced by "new day" progress of morning. That is, until, "The first opened door soon taints the silence" and we are brought back from this sensory reverie to the "usual routines" and our "new chapter from torn, yellowed pages/Is resurrected into tangible shapes." The imagery is light and appropriate to the poem's tone, "Sunrise crawls across cobblestone streets", "Following the lead of my oversized shadow", "A fountain shines at the heart of the square", "Shares the air with benevolent fumes"... all offering just the touch, without any otherwise detraction from the insensate blending created. A well done accomplishment of craft holding form well to stanzaic structure solely with poetic language and not suffering at all, the cumbersome confinement of rhyme. Obviously, you are accomplished. JCH2006-01-22 10:24:30
DarningDellena RovitoWomen make far more of "busy work" than do men in and about the recovery we constantly make of life's "broken" aspects. Men are more direct...often to the point of fault. You create a wonderful traveling euphemism of this sock drawer and your concerns to set all it contains, darned/righted. The final line unifies this parallel well and reaches towards a sublimated conclusion in the form of "a weaver", perhaps better capitalized (Weaver) if your allusion is meant to be God. Following the stanza just before ("broken-promises, broken-hearts, broken-bones, etc.") The hyphen suggests this as your hyphenated phrase becomes conceptualized into more than mere modified noun. Again, your poem is a traverse into the woman who as mother and care-giver, has the over-powering concern to "right what's wrong as quickly, conscientioulsy and frugally as possible", the wonderful mothering instinct. It is charming the way you revisit the fashion eras attached to items you find in the drawer, just as, in stages of our lives, we find the currents of the times, with their own characteristics. "To make them usable again" comes to represent, in clandestine overtone, the hope we all have to revisit youth. This is the core of your lovely poem and what takes its reader into your running parallel more completely. Just capitalize weaver. JCH2006-01-22 09:37:20
Gunning, dying.Mark Andrew Hislop"Gunning, dying,"...ghosting. Capturing well the "progress" of a town lost to progress in the creation of imagery alone is quite a feat. The well crafted syntactical phrase, "their hat- trick of traffic," followed by the excellent, "commerce and pulse stolen." well justifies the emphatic last line. And, no, this ramrod called progress gives nothing back. Who of all, have not been "buried by lost time"?, this elevation of poem to universality and the placing of one concern into the "meal" that progress brings to all, what Thomas Wolfe so well broached in, You Can't Go Home Again and what we all must face with the forces of change, is inspired. In this poem, Mark, you demonstrate the ability to observe poetics both in craft and theme delivery that would, if revisited among so many of your other poems, produce the success many of them deserve. Place you as an exceptional poet and gifted imagist. It is not lost that your wrap-around lines are an enhancement to the imagery of a road now more meandered by out-of-the-way-ness as a stream to the eroding of its banks. You are abreast of the modern poeming of today with these faculties. You are going to where form is fashioned organically, used not of itself, for itself, but towards goals the poet elects. You elect well. The purpose carries a structure of its own and that is creativity. In this way, I see this poem very significant to discussions and considerations helpful to all poetic effort here. What you've exampled here can improve any excursion into free verse to prove that free verse is not always so "free". To be successful, the poet must have an even better idea of what he wants to accomplish than in more structured verse. This poem IS successful and shows a remarkable poetic intent on your part. It is one of the four best poems so far submitted this month and is the most interesting in the aspect of analysis. Don't forget the maturity you've displayed. JCH2006-01-21 18:40:25
The QuestThomas H. SmihulaThere is a descendant sprial winding quality to the language and declined line structure in each stanza. The push to the sky of the Indian prayer falling to resignation. Had I my own designs this would be the abandon of woman upon man in the act of love-making. Perhaps thought especially exotic due to her heritage and perhaps something you detect, embraced by that allure, as with all feminine mystique, supernal in some respect. As if you are bestowed with something from above, something more than the many metaphors we place upon sex otherwise lightly taken. And the I of the poem, whose spirit is conquered, as in quest, of something more than woman. Something domained by more added to the mystique than sex alone, than passion alone. Something for which to quest. In form, style and in delivery your poem is like a prayer, an Indian prayer for this. It is appropriately indefinite as in the "grasping", where, "all I reach is air". But where the spirit has transcended the physical, not left untouched and to beforgotten...but rather, somehow, taken. The Indian belief in manifestation of thought taking form is here. And in no better place. Very interesting poem, Thomas. JCH2006-01-15 18:01:59
Adrift on Cloud NineMary J CoffmanMary, the lavish sensuality found in your poem, so full of imagery unique to feminine experience is precious to the ears.You fascinate the male psyche turned to expect nothing of this sort, yet longing for some bridge of intimacy apart from the so much less experience the male has grown to expect. To be well loved is to love well. Not in owing, anymore than to the woman, than just as much to the man. This woman has no baggage to prevent her exhileration, no guilt to hold in reserve full sensual pleasure. As one cannot tell the dancer from the dance (Yeats, Among School Children)so there is no difference in aspect of the lovers, lost into each other.The state of being, "marooned in listless moments" is just that, a joy of being free from the self. It is become unimaginable that men today can rely, a woman can become this immersed with him. The death of love is represented in so many more ways than any such expression you offer here. Your poem is so wonderful to a man for he cannot indulge you imagery without accounting full measure as much to your lover. Faceting, you innately capture this. "deliriously drifting into silent lucidity" is poetic language confounding to the male unpleasured by love articulated in such a manner. Mary, I do believe you could be the Casanova of women. A whole technique of corrupted yoga is devoted to nothing more than acquiring just a bit of, "my core trembling/set aquiver by a fleeting flurry of wings/as butterflies waltz across my skin", to but come up with such a failed effort. For men do not know this, cannot. Only observing it, and then by rare gift only. Any might come to so easily identify with the rivulets of water from seething tide awash against your body, knowing your awareness so keenly of it, knowing the progression on the hope of where it might go. This is all your fault, you know. I'm going for a walk. JCH2006-01-14 17:13:32
A Woman CombingThomas Edward WrightThomas, the best poem I've so far reviewed this month. I'm fond of onomatopoeia and you've found it the one word, "thrum". Elegant. But that's a small aspect of this wonderful poem. Elegant too is the imagery in the comparison of nerve complex responding to the tug of a brush through hair, to the intricate structures (presumably) of Victorian suburbs. Poetically turning the line, "Her day licks its bowl dry" is of the highest caliber of this craft's language while, "Breeze-pestered into motion", by far your best image, is nothing less than a superb example of image building. The third stanza/verse is my favorite, sustaining throughout one completed vision, more than one image it is an incredible unity of many. Alabaster fish test the net's strength. A nail parts a wave from its sea. The hiss of hair and the sea waves. Piously she pulls in the catch. Nothing I can say less than to applaud could be anymore than trite. The rest of the poem carries well these highlights, but in the final verse/stanza, we are brought up by "One Downs' girl" that to me, can only mean Downs Syndrome, giving the final gifted line an utter meaning, "Selling not a word of her life sentence". And the poem, a depth for which this reader was quite unprepared. I seriously doubt that a better poem will be offered this month. Most likely, this will be my voting choice. JCH 2006-01-12 21:36:26
death...her victory!Rebecca B. WhitedRebecca, the sheer power of your theme here can carry any structure, any stanzaic formation, any decorative style one might make with declining line. Cay you, however, reach a better contextual rendering so that the reader AT ONCE, with only the first reading, grasps the overall complicity of a system with this mother in obtaining such ironic delivery that death becomes a deliverer, even a tragic "victory"? For, if you can, this poem will succeed, I believe, beyond expectations. I, personally, because concern for children should BIND us all to commonality, desire you to. You have so much to say and I want your power in saying it to be absolutely perfected. It is like a sacred task. But so many would wish to escape, let's be honest, the real import of your theme here. To read in, to read out, what can keep away the stark realization of the monsters out there, harming children with the complicity of us all, by what we tolerate of a system of "child protection" that doesn't protect, only trades in empty legality, fines and crass self-importance. Don't let the readers get away with this blithe "visit" to your poem. You can nail them with oh such slight changes. Give us just a little more "characterization" of this mother, a little more of a court being tied up in procedure, procedure wholly meaningless to any purpose except evasion of taking ANY responsibility itself for having the courage to EFFECTIVELY protect this child. I don't stress this because you have any weakness as a poet, I do so because, unless you've observed this close up, one might not appreciate the magnitude of this problem, might not think it epidemic. And we both know it is. I just had to reread your poem to know for sure you did. And that, you can easily correct. Make me know the first reading. My utmost regards, JCH 2006-01-11 08:32:18
RhymePaul von Kempf, JR.This is a lark, very very clever. I'm sure nothing invites this more than verse labored to step in candence with "rhyme". It is doubtful that anyone can pen a rhyme scheme today without wondering if their poem is not too clumsy at the effort...at the expense of meaning and, perhaps, presenting the line better in less contrived manner. Then to, as you may here, reach the self-revelatory point where it's all so much guff. Certainly better than being self-congratulatory. My reaction is to think up excuses to sublimate free verse and kind of snicker at those that handle this structured stuff better than me. Sometimes I get caught, though. How much you charge for a ride in this hearse? Might like to tour NYC in it....at least as far as Greenwich Village. JCH2006-01-10 15:15:49
Open UpThomas H. SmihulaTake more care, Thomas, in short poems, to avoid spelling errors and figures of speech that, though common usage, can ill-effect the impression of poet as "word merchant". "Ent(w)ine", to "great places" and, just open the door, instead of, "just open, up the door...". Grab hold..., if you must, Grab ahold. Poetry is all about compactness. Only expansiveness is otherwise appropriate and, only that, when their is some reason for it. There could easily be an opportunity for you to do that here with something modifying "cliff" instead of causing the reader to wonder are you passing under or by this cliff in question. As well, you might capture for us what inclines you, the poet, to be this wonderful gallant...what draws such fascinating ardor. And that might draw us, the readers, more in to this poem. JCH 2006-01-10 15:00:38
a rantcharles r pittsCharles, I don't think this poem is as lacking as you might think. I would submit, you might add to its novelty by out-and-out representing it boldly as the "laundry list" of man's misdeeds to man. Do it with some title as, "Demon's Trip to the Laundrymat" or "Recollections upon Shortly Returning from Sunday School" and/or, "The Little Golden Book of Self-improvement for the Human Race, Chapter One, Historical Attonement (the brief version.)" Add a touch of sardonic humor and you're there. But whatever you might do, keep the lines, "but there are no hearses/made with luggage racks." JCH 2006-01-10 12:03:47
RainThomas H. SmihulaThis is a most wonderful euphemism you make, Thomas, of the entirety of how one might approach life. And, of the gratitude those living can have of the sensual once they've decided on a courageous and open reception of what it has to offer. Almost a Biblical thing. Your last stanza reaffirms this, admonishing, "To avoid is to lack nourishment", suggesting the spiritual element and how it just might formulate far more than we might imagine. By this end (and this is the only suggestion I might make,) your success doesn't need the "dropped" line, "From the Rain"....as if you were trying to de-expand what you have so temporally expanded. The title suffices. "A transparent glaze" is imagery at its best and is so fulfilling the poem does not suffer any lacking by having so little imagery elsewhere. In fact, the adage of a little being a lot, is achieved by it. Your very structuring seems to impart a cascading effect to the reader, further enhancing his/her experience. Delightful. JCH2006-01-10 08:45:14
In Remembrance Of 62stephen g skipperStephen, I want you to structure this poem within the metered count of iambic pentameter. The heroic couplet virtually demands it and you obviously have the skill to accomplish the task. I'm really not one to talk, I all to often mix verse and free verse in a seemingly haphazard fashion (of all things) and I depart most formulations without much precedence. And I'm not kind to mediocrity...hardly ever. When you are employing mythology, absolutely rely on the reader to follow without cues in your poem, thus, you can reduce a stumble, "(her)ravens of nightmare" to "ravens of nightmare" and solve the metered foot count problem for that line easily. Check it out and see for yourself how much nicer to the ear this is. Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe had such long-reaching impact on all drama and verse that followed their marvelous work, that I do believe it has sunk to the subliminal level of our consciousness. If so, that would explain why so many oddly digress almost unconsciously to copy them. Few however bring the gifts you show promise of delivering. Make yourself famliar with Elizabethan sonnet and get to work. JCH 2005-12-03 12:24:03
The Origin of SpeciousThomas Edward WrightA reader would have to know a bit about Charles Darwin to fully appreciate this poem. I am relieved your complexity takes away the presumptions placed upon him by those that attribute so much in error regarding his work. To imagine him with "Bible well-traveled" is the kind of illusion that did indeed fit a man far from athieism. More than all this, your poem handles the orthodox as they need be handled...obscuring intention just enough to avoid the crass oversimplifications triggered on uninformed emotion. We go where truth leads us or we fall prey to the common den of hackdom, inspite of those that would defame us out of nothing more than dishonest resentment Your last line, "He shakes the branch whose/Apples grace our Fall", is your best and superlative. Capitalizing Fall, you are either devout yourself, or a fan of John Milton's. I think you over contemporize with "Victoria's Secret." It tends to disjoint a little an otherwise well crafted poem. It is well that your perplexity with contradiction cuts both ways, as you spy the monk brewer's profession and the suggestions of "Body and Blood of Christ" taken literally. Would the zealot move with the same ardor to examine Mr. Darwin and his truths, he would to resolve such quandary. But then there are so many vices in life to blind one from truth, ignorance being the worst. Your informed appreciation of Mr Darwin grants you far more than poetic license. An excellent poem. JCH 2005-12-01 21:15:55
Thirty Days Has SeptemberMell W. MorrisIn one of the silly little spats we so often have with others, I had pledged not to critique unless specifically asked. Yet, I am not so certain, when one drops "specifically" I was not asked. By the time you have reached your last line, "and Mr. IOU never knew/what he was missing!" the point is far more than well established. The exclamation mark kind of detracts from emphatic understatement. Something, I've noticed, you are more than adequate to deliver. Stupid?...we're worse than stupid, drooling adulation upon a slithery form draped seductively around a pole just because "she" deigns to look our way. Senseless to what might be left at home waiting to touch our soul with astounding discovery. Traces of that capacity are more than apparent here. Two things announce our cultural decline best, pedophiles now survive prison, and women now follow after men's habits more. Only when a man is privilaged to read a poem such as yours can he today be made aware fully the sweetness of woman still persists. Probably, that is why only the most external aspects of the female attribute are expressed today...almost solely, in the obsession to "reconstruct" what nature and genetics have already given. You have a gift for terse imagery. "their differences grew steadily more leech-like" is a remarkable example of this. Though the simile, "set her aside like a cup of cold coffee" is in keeping with this, I think leaving it at "set her aside like a cup" better serves that terse style. The imagery you build around your retreat is as inviting to the reader and as endearing to the empathy you evoke from your reader as the character you display to resist bitterness. That, alone, would make WBY proud to participate, I'm certain. JCH 2005-11-21 10:42:25
TherapyMark Andrew HislopAlright, Mark, you've asked for it and I'm going to give it to you. Your poem has the "meat" to be a masterpiece. Only the application of discipline is needed to accomplish that. As I have said to another promising poet, the "thing" we must all strive for, is to produce a "letter to the world" quality. To find something so universsal, both in imagery and in context, no sensitive reader walks away unsatisfied. In the way the poet wishes to satisfy. This is the difference between poetry and prose, not form, not, that much, language. Poetry is the charm that sets upon all its audience, a message free from the suspicion of motive. For when it does, the Muse has spoken, that God or Goddess, of clarity. It is the Muse that sets free the fetters from the poet's heart. Have I accomplished this? I can't answer. I want to...G..Damnit, I am devoted to...but I don't know. I can point to others that have, even in just one tiny little line, placed just at the right place, lightly touching the heavy or heaviily touching the light....just the way no one else has. I may end my days grieving, like the accomplished Thomas Hardy, over not being able to bring myself to having belief I had. Now, for where I as a critic share with you exactly where I'm coming from and how that gives me some degree of license to venture where I might otherwise be presumed to tread. My first wife was given a graduate assistanceship to Michigan State. I came with her, while still an undergraduate. Our marriage grew increasingly stormy and it soon became clear most of the problems came back to her father and to what she erroneously perceived, at some level or another, to be a "commonality" he shared with all other men. I don't need to go into details. At my suggestion, we sought professional "therapy". This came down, after two years, to providing her with nothing more than feeling more justified in her ruthless approach to dealing with me, something each therapist confessed was a failed result and for which no explanation could be given. One "professional" idiot did say I might try beating her when she might attack me. During this time I had been accepted into a graduate program in the Department of Canadian-American Relations. The chairman of my committee knew I had enormous bills to pay trying to help my wife. He found me an opportunity to work for a think tank, The Ford Foundation, on a contract basis and I was given a project that allowed me to unwittingly become personna non grata with the Canadian government and finally left me unable to pursue a career I would have liked to pursue, by leading to disallowing me the status to work in Canada when the project required it. All because I perceived I needed to provide my wife with care I couldn't really afford AND that "therapy" might help someone not suffering from any actual malady except pathological narcissism. So, when you employ an otherwise oblique, though highly cerebric illusion, like, "its tears are an anti-romantic disinfectant" I know only too well your meaning...but others may not, others we, as poets, are obliged to share meaning with more fully. Here, that can be done by simply adding something like the line, {to wash away the guilt, unearned or not} are wherever you might care to go with this truth you've stirred into breath. Cupidity is a wonderful pun upon Cupid, but you have to do more to earn the carry into image. You want more than pun, you have to employ an adroit simile, not just slide into pun and expect it to suffice. The last three lines have a beauty all their own, but one might understandably miss the subtle irony here. Any penetrating reader has already detected the silent anger intensely drawing up, go ahead and give it vent. I know you can without losing to the brutish. In the end you can find more, a universal anchor here you've missed. One that could point the reader into one of many possible "findings". Again, considerations I know you possess. I would "instruct"...mainly because I personally am so inclined, but you might choose to be more subtle...and you could. Still, I kind of like, in some way, to expose the quackery of modern psychoanalysis a little more when it is divorced from any real care for the patient...which it too often is, only beginning with the wallet. JCH 2005-11-16 13:11:47
And So It WentDellena RovitoDellena, you're something. I think I like you for the same reasons I like Marsha Steed. Some time ago you and I didn't it off too well, back on the old Forum when I seemed to be having a lot of fun at most everyone else's expense. It only seemed that way and I think you figured that out. Your poem here is delightful. Not just because of its protagonist being able to come through societal "minamalizing" but that they win out over it, that they are in no way lesser for it, but better. Bringing off the first question anyone would probably think to ask, isn't life vastly more than one big popularity contest, starting the first time the kids in school realized some were dressed better than others? This is a very good poem, aside from its reliance on a form it well observes, aside from its tempered use of imagery and tight verse structure. There is a stark difference between your poem and one other that seeks to battle with what it perceives to be unfair treatement. Yours is universal enough to apply broadly and to launch no singular attack on another that might make it a vendetta. Yours has been inspired by Muse, not just sruck to "use". Yours will stand the test of acutally being "poetry". The product of a quiet spirit, one that can have a Muse. You know the richness of your thoughts and you've found a genre in which to express them. Donald Trump has had every advantage and that goose looks like a masquerade that never ends and will partake in any absurd venture to be in the public eye. You are as much ahead of him in class and thought as those that may have made your protagonist feel like a lesser, but that would now be standing in line to grovel for a job from this syncophant. Well, perhaps I'll get another of your poems today...don't forget the "1". JCH 2005-11-14 17:09:39
The Moral AspectMark Andrew HislopMark, I was going to stick with just critiqueing poems as they came up on my lists. That can't keep me, however, from reading what is posted. This one has such powerful lines, it arrested me to comment. There is every right for every mortal to quesion anything. The principal of free will is just that. Over my stay on this pitiful planet I've know many wonderful people, some atheists. Always these atheists were obsessed with confronting God, whether they knew it or not. And always, not in the sense of treating something that did not exist, but in the sense of something that had abandoned them and did. At first, I wrote this off to pre-juvenile imprinting, the immersion of young minds into a milieu full of religious reference. But I began to know men and women "atheists" whose parents has taken pains to seclude them from this. Still, there was no difference. The funny thing about all these "atheists" was that they were, for the most part, the most moral and intro- spective of all. And the most self-demanding. As if they were showing everyone how much better they could be without God. When I would argue that it might be religion they were really at odds with, they would get pissed at me and threaten to stop dealing with me at all. Many had thought me an atheist, and for them, I had become something that had either reverted due to an imaginary bump on the head, or was some kind of double agent. Even when I told them I allowed no one else to speak for God to me, it made no difference. They had become "socialized" as much into atheism as the religious had in their beliefs. I finally concluded they had become as steeped in "religion" as those that believed in God. Denial can become its own God. I see God as Purpose and His Hand is all about us. He is like my ultimate Theory, one that incorporates all things into meanings I've yet to understand, but have the faith that all things have meaning. Now maybe I have rationalized just to avoid atheist society. They ARE the most boring people on the planet and make up a great many of the misanthrope population, but I still have the highest regard and love for them because they are vastly the purest people you will ever know, always harder on themselves than others. In that respect, I find them angelic. That's a kicker, isn't it? One of them could have written this poem. W.B. Yeats referred to a Ceremony of Innocence, it was what Morrison entwined into his Ceremony of the Lizard. Both knew on an highly personal level, the substance of this poem of yours. Even the more nefarious and highly gifted charge of Alistair Crowley, Jack Parsons (who founded The Jet Propulsion Laboratories) visited your concerns at great length and in far more erudite terms than the Founder of the Golden Dawn. These were devout men all, religious men all. And all suffered deeply from feelings that God had abandoned them. You are keenly intelligent. Once cannot argue with such wonderful stanzas as this: Within the highest church of Here and Now, Where all the evil is, and all the Host That drew us up, debased us with ourselves And gave us lamentations in our dust. But God did not bless any of those that pronounce blessing. He did not condemn those condemned out of the mouths of men. Christian fellowship, any fellowship is not one step above a bawdy brawl when it is led by a Pied Piper or pedophile priest (inspite of the Doctrine of Infallibility) and because you know this so deeply does not discharge your understanding from being acceptable by anyone of conscience. For that is where the bite comes in, does it not? Truth must always be on the plate. The example of Job is just one mix of a pot started boiling by those obsessed by speaking for God. Just as Duane Jackson, in his poem on the serpent finds issue with the story of Adam and Eve. But the damage done comes into the present and manifests in ways that could hardly have been meant by any God. Now I have a point in all this: You are right to hold Man as your immediate concern, but do not shout to the heavens about what is solely confined to this earth. There are things kept from your view that could easliy reconcile you to a less angered aspect, as far as to grant you answers to questions even you have yet to ask. It is evil Men that hide these from you, men that haven't the purity to be atheists (free thinkers) but believe in nothing, instead. JCH 2005-11-11 17:44:15
Bang TodayDellena RovitoDellena, you are paradoxically inclined, lending well to your ability to take poetic drift somewhere and not just another cliche' or redundance. Your ending line is both an excellent example of how you do this and how you can find depth out of a familiar others haven't. Although I don't subscribe to the Big Bang Theory, I certainly believe in God, and his marvelous bounty and, yes, I find it absurd that the New Age questions His Hand in so many ways simply to accommodate their self absorbtion in "allergies" and food sensitivity. The weather is another thing. I find the imagery you create in the Creation to be marvelously carried, but I would suggest that atmosphere, in, "Stars formed and fell in the atmosphere" be changed to something like aether since atmosphere applies solely to the self contained gases around one planet. Aether has both an esoteric and vast historical value. What's more, I do believe the future will see it come to play a more and more prominate role in discerning matter elementally. Maybe even bringing mankind closer, not further away, to an awe of God's design. Your most astute point is that man takes for granted too much...and at his peril. Indeed JCH 2005-11-10 16:08:01
Smoke DancersTerrye GodownI must say, a delightful change from the New Age fascination with the mystical and its fastening on sublimation of such experience. Yours is pure fancy and your own notation on it is regarded. Comparing smoke wreaths to dancers is inspired and anyone can place themselves in your vision with little effort. Most certainly when we tire and are more susceptible to allow our imagination into our thoughts. "Shadows swirling miserably" is your best image, bringing with it the play further fulfilled in, "They sway with culture's scorn". By now the reader must have guessed the situation, amusingly...without benefit of your note. Because you poem is elegant, the following line, "Their affliction is addiction", seems a bit trite. You don't need it. Leave it with the superb ending, "They must dance/until/they die." JCH2005-11-10 14:50:35
An Old Leather ChairMarsha SteedMarsha, I suggest you place four to five lines per verse since couplet and inversion have a strange characteristic when you don't, and you use less. The iamb or foot count will take on a sing-song effect and detract from the other elements of the poem. Another thing that I think might improve the poem is allowing your reader a little more insight into just what atrocity is being committed here. Either that, or to do more in universalizing the sinister nature of something as insidious as domestic violence...if it is, or a home break-in, if that's the story. See?, we don't know. There is a point in leaving such detail out of a poem, but that is mechanically to emphasize some other meaning a particular work might have. I don't see one here. Again, you turn lines well and have a talent for rhyme. Along with good instincts, you have the equipment to be a poet. Focus more on poetry as a craft (I'm one to talk) and perhaps you can inspire me to do the same. JCH 2005-11-10 08:34:33
Taking your leaveMark Andrew HislopWell, not really "such sweet sorrow" is it? Mark, you have talent. Your use of "alchemies" is not loose, you create an alchemy of poetic language twice in this highly rich poem, texturing it into unity with continued use of alchemical term (unalloyed.) "a suicide sip of unalloyed freedom, released by a cyanide, the kind you simply can't be sure you really want to find" is of the highest calibre of writing. Did you know potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide solutes silver the same way aqua regis solutes gold? This poem has a sadness to it, almost a tragic sadness in that the conflict is about self-discovery ("I discover my deepest truth after a lifetime diving blind") trying to merge with the expectations of another. One variable is bad enough, two are catastrophe. The lie that men and women are essentially the same serves no understanding and, only when we are reconciled to the reality that the differences are not only present but sometimes stark, do we press on without bitterness. Here, the likeness to alchemy ends and we are left merely with the less than metaphysical, unbalanced equation. The wisdom of that realization resounds in, "And yet/you really must take it". The afterthought, "Or so it seems." is the human nature to relent. An elegant touch. JCH 2005-11-09 20:52:08
SECRETS IN THE WELLarvin r. rederYou are in poetic license to stumble your sentences upon each other, connected as they are by an almost stream of consciousness "continuity". The first two lines, "Listen to the night it(')s whisper/A real story from a quiet street" address well the excursion into reverie the rest of the poem entails. "Shimmering leaves were on call" is an excellent image, playing well into the episodic you create out of forcing the reader to establish his own context. The excursions you take into extended meanings are delightful. "And the words flowed with no guard" has vastly more to say than merely, unencumbered. Just as, "but so young our stories short" has volumes more than, inexperienced. We progress through the poem as happy to disgard the obvious question of what secret the well holds as we are to not press the question to what secret, "then not to tell" in the "church yard". For, succeeding, you take the reader into a world sharing the experience...and, just as they find their own context, they so apply their own secrets. Let's call it biological inevitability. This gives your last stanza the exhuberant appreciation a fresh "experience" pictures well in, "Sewing from river to stream/I reached once for a low cloud". I would gather the last lines to signify sublimation. If so, a nice excursion to sublimate. JCH 2005-11-09 00:17:16
October Bluesstephen g skipperYour language is oblique, Stephen. There is almost a Quixotic contradiction between a "familiar blanket of [dark depression] and the "warm and soft" protective mother. This begins your poem and brings the reader to look for some meaning in what might otherwise be construed as disparity. Surely, in life, there is one proclivity after another for things to fall out with what they might initially seem. But you do not take us where that might be. Then you refer to "the wings" without further context. We have mixed imagery wondering about your meaning. Is this a more remote region of some building?....or is this more? Later, in your note, we better conceive you might be referring to a closed ward, or where someone might have been kept...even involuntarily. In the respect of finding meaning behind your assertion, "sanity waits for no man" we are left again unsatisfied. There are many things you might mean, but, again, no context. The last stanza and parting line stand well as they are, but they unify no meaning to what went before...when they could have. I feel you have something to impart and that it is important enough to probe to meaning. In fact, you might have a wonderful thing to share if you will but expand and elucidate just a bit more in a rewrite. JCH2005-11-08 21:06:36
November SighsNancy Ann HemsworthI don't usually comment on formulated verse since it's not my own choice, Nancy, but yours is agreeable enough so that I can do so without giving away my bias nearly as much. Obviously your stanzaic scheme requires talent to execute without the words seeming contrived, or chosen more for rhyme and rhythem than for meaning. It takes both an arsenal of vocabulary and an almost instinctive appreciation of iamb count. With only an extra syllable, you come close enough to succeed and I found your poem an unexpected pleasure. Structure can sometimes help tap into an almost buried collective consciousness through striking some cord primitive man developed the chant around. The lightness that you observe (Autumns closing sky whispers sighs) brings us that quality and does so without the drum beat, or an overly taxed use of repetition. Of course, a fanatic to this form would probably find fault with these qualities I detect, but then that would only hint at why I'm not a fan of form. JCH2005-11-08 13:28:35
Emotional VampireMarsha SteedMarsha, I would shorten this. There are too many verses on just one point and that creates the feeling for the reader of an harangue. The lines are well turned and the ryhme is not contrived. I especially liked, "allures" with "yours". Use of inversion is a curious thing, however, and that can make ryhme look contrived when it is done too selectively. It is sad that the poem hasn't the bite (pardon the pun) to it today that it would have in Victorian times when seduction was supposed to carry more than transience; and when bars were not posting stations for one's next affair. I would, with these considerations in mind, have fastened on the psychic vampirism of the family member that works on their prey vastly more to a degree of harm than those seeking to accomodate lust. This is the realm where true evil lurks, not here, where we are scarcely able to appreciate the frightful context of a "vampire" that really isn't. Marsha, I don't want you to feel like I am picking on you...actually I like you. Yours was just the first poem designated on my list. I am going to be honest and offer something to the people here other than approbation. Maybe that will help stop the endemic drooling others offer just to keep a place in a line going nowhere. In short, you have talent and, by now, would be a better poet were the others not doing disservice to you. There has to be something terribly wrong with a system that somehow promotes a mediocrity like Lora Silvey to have more authority over deciding on poems than you or a dozen others I can name... a system where critiques are written for position (evidently) and not truth. JCH2005-11-08 07:45:52
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