Poetry Forum

I actually rather liked this. The first line almost put me off: too much alliteration and I hate the word fondant, which cloys. I'm not dead keen on words like whence, either. But there's an idea behind the poem that's worth developing, and a feel for rhythm. I liked 'Let no cold inhibition bar your...

Hello all! Thanks for all your comments. I didn't want to post more stuff until I'd had a chance to engage with this one and have a crack at editing it. I've done that and changed it quite a lot. I think it still has a fair few problems, especially rhythmic, and I'd appreciate any further thoughts. ...

Just to say that I read this first time round, loved it then, and the revised version is equally powerful.
I think maybe I'd put in a vote for swaddled, as the more startling, tender and problematic of the two versions.
cheers
Helenx

HI Dedalus Just stopping by briefly and chose to spend my time reading one by you rather than ten by others! How could I resist a bit of Ovid at the top. But I have to say it seems more like Amores 2.4 (which is, as it happens, one of my favourites) than 1.2. V. Ovidian: almost a collection of Metam...

Hi Dante
Late to the party; I just wanted to say this has ended up really good. One of your best!
A busy old time for me, so I'm only able to pop in every now and again.
cheers
Helen

Just to say that I enjoyed this and your changes have strengthened it. My OH ruins the whole game by using a food processor; in fact we have an ongoing dispute about the proper texture of apple crumble and how it should be cooked. He likes his apples virtually uncooked with very little sugar, making...

BL
Thank you - sadly, I quite agree. Free for all on suggestions to actually turn this into a poem!
Helenx

When did my life divide, creating two periods: before and after you? Remember those hours: bored by your voice, uncaptivated by looking at you. Time passed me by; I missed it all, watching but not remembering. Time that would now be hoarded and treasured, seconds like grains of gold slipping through...

Ray I enjoyed this a lot, but like others I stumbled on the rhythms. I'm happy to accept that it works as a song, but wouldn't it be nice if it worked for someone else to read it too? The lines I found difficult were: S1 line 1: change 'twenty eighth' to 'twenty somethingth' (I think it needs an ext...

*rolls around floor* You guys are priceless!
Hx

Well, I really liked this and didn't find it cliched at all. Is it because I'm a girl?! Or just that I haven't read enough poetry?!! In fact, I thought you played rather nicely with the idea of cliches in your 'I will not offer you' bit. I particularly like S1 I might punctuate this bit differently:...

Dedalus: you are a one-man refutation that PG has a 'style'! (Good.) I always really enjoy your stuff, though like others find it hard to write critically about it. So I'll just pick some bits I like and say why I like them: for childhood's continuous continual murmurs for the auld old-fashioned str...

I read this as more about the Iraqi 13 yr old suicide bomber, with S2 the heart of the poem, than the Gillick competent 13 yr old who stands as a contrast. Deep ironies. Packs a punch in very few words. Is 13 the new 19? And far from seeing this as polemical, I'd see it as complex and thought-provok...

Barrie, Jon, Jimmy - thanks for the comments. The Venus reference is a self-allusion (nasty habit): see http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7755 I did conceive of these poems as a 'book' of elegies, and was imagining that any reader might read them at a rate rather faster than...

This is dead cool.
Will come back with more detailed thoughts, but just wanted to say how much I enjoyed it.
cheers
Helen

I’m flying high in fantasy America, inside the movie, going back in time, or out of this time, into a parallel dimension, above the haze and bathed in glowing gold; the texture of the leather seat is ultra-real yet somehow always out of reach, and Venus is doing that gold dust thing again; I'm drift...

Hi Jimmy Enjoyed the read. My theory on child and adult time is that time feels like the proportion of your life that has passed (when not telescoped or flattened out by other things). So the older we get the faster it goes. But maybe children move through time faster... I too am attracted by the di...

Hi Barrie Pretty subtle stuff. I guess it's rattles and infinity that stand out: pretty much everything else is tied in by some sort of rhyme/half-rhyme. Which is nice: since form v. chaos is one theme, and perhaps being made to go and have a lie down is a rather appropriate response, since it feels...

Hello! I liked this a lot; I'm a big fan of war poetry and this period (and sonnets). I liked the circularity (self-referentiality?). My great-uncle starved to death in a PoW camp just before the armistice was signed. He had signed up illegally by lying about his age at only 15, and was 18 when he d...

Thank you, Elph and everyone! A much appreciated boost.
I'm still around and about but rather busy
Hope to get things under control and start posting more regularly again sometime soon...
Helenx

og Really enjoyed this: the humour aimed affectionately at both sides. I'm with Barrie on the metre, especially the young scientist bit. For me, also, the lines she might have stayed there, peering in at us, for days. didn't quite feel right. Oddly I felt you need another beat so would add something...

Barrie Enjoyed this a lot. Though a bit sad that Hollow Ian didn't get more fleshing out, as it were. He sounds like a colourful character. Two bits I'd fiddle with: 'moan groanly' in the revised version seemed a bit heavy-handed compared to the rest - though I did like groanly, and I'm not really c...

Thank you everyone. It's a funny old world: often the poems I cringe to post go down OK, while the ones I quite like turn out to be deeply problematic. This _was_ one of my favourites in the first lot, but I can now see it needs a great deal more work. Barrie (and David): Metre. It's all over the pl...

Season of rains and hopeless wistfulness: Each year comes round again and here I am, still sitting here, defined by restlessness, still looking, unreconciled, qualis eram , a ghost of my own desires, no longer on fire, wandering Naxos on my own. No god descends, about to land, to fly me higher, abov...

k-j I've been puzzling over this one for a bit. I like the mood and the sounds. OK, here goes: for me your illicit love image opens up lots of different resonances in the rest of the poem. There's a thread of sensual personification running through the poem. Geese migrating in a swish of russet Brea...