Poetry Forum

I must have been a morbid child, drawn so easily from the playground, away from the sunshine and laughter, to the long silent room, that housed our municipal museum. I was new to death, knew only the strangeness of Grandma laid pale in pine, face carved with pain and years. There were nettles where ...

Sharra. This is disturbing. I do not see it as the mother/parent comforting a nightmare-frightened child. I thiink the visitor is the terror else why should the child 'hide'. What is the implication of 'afterwards' - after what? And the disguise of 'telling her it was all a dream'. I think I know wh...

Jimmy I think this is exceptional. A very sensitive piece of writing. I see no reaching for rhyme at all and indeed it was so unobtrusive that even though I recognised the sonnet form from its shape and line number on the page I still did not pick up immediately on the rhyme. Perhaps if I read it al...

Hello Sharra. Thanks for the read and for the time taken to comment. I have explained in an earlier post on this thread that the poem has used the Camus essay on the Myth rather than the Myth itself. Camus argues that the absurdity of modern life is only absurd when we are conscious of it then the v...

Eliot, Frost, Hopkins in that order.
Arthur

The 'phrases: work on it for a few days, fiddle with the line breaks, see what I can cut out etc all refer to the crafting of a poem and it is important to remember that writing poetry is as much a craft as it is an art, more craft really than art. Actually reading other's work and commenting as we ...

Hopkins:

And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.


Inspiring . Arthur

Thank you both for your time and reading. Dave, I was referring more to the Camus essay than the myth itself. I saw this man sweeping sand (a punishment at St Anne's rather than a job) as a perfect example of the absurdity of modern life as defined in the essay ' The Myth of Sisyphus'. Two quotes to...

Ian. I think that when people object to cliches they are saying that the phrase or whatever is tired and lifeless and that in a poem one is looking for a renewal of language through a new use of a word or a fresh sharp image. Now having said that there is a poetic device that permits reusing a phras...

The sand that trails from the fist of this chill February wind collects in slant cones and wedges, wreaths the foot of the memorial plinth, drifts up the drives of hotels; a soft wind-sifted plume combs through the crocus and sidles slyly into town. I watch him sweep his pile, try to imagine him hap...

I have worked all my life as a teacher and lecturer in Mathematical Education. I never had time to do more than scribble occasionally and lose what I wrote. Poetry was for me personally and no one else-an indulgence. I read established poets and discovered the wonder of Gerard Manley Hopkins one nig...

Hi Ros. Found you! This poem has a surreal quality. The advert wanting the bizarre swap engages the imagination and zap! I mean who wants to get rid of his tatoo set and replace it with an air rifle. Who is this man? What is his life like that this is normal for him. I can see where the imagination ...

Requiem: Spring 1943 Chattering with excitement we traipsed up from the clamour of mills to the deep woods, loud with Spring. Lads! Raucous, war-lean, muscled like skinned rabbits daft as otters, dared the chill of the cut to ramp and sport. Spencer took me deeper. The air rifle, hung broken over hi...

This is a fine poem. I always see my grandchildren as affirmation of a sort of immortality for me. Grand-daughter tiny hand upon my knee, shoplifter's smile, carrots in my slippers. They get away with more than your own kids do and the real pleasure is having them for a day and sending them home at ...

Hello again Ben. This a fun slant comment on peoples reactions to news. Panic induced by the slightest hint of an impending doom. The irony of the piece is that if it as cold as Russia in Hampshire and Russia itself is as warm as Hampshire then it is really quite warm in Hampshire or Russia is reall...

Hello Ben. The poem's sparse language is fitting to the gravity of what is going on. It does not need lyricism to make its point. The matter-of-fact tone you adopt is telling, particularly 'meat, in a huge swollen heap' while seemingly brutal and unfeeling is in fact the opposite. A quick aside. The...