Poetry Forum

Thank you all for the generous comments. You are right, David, Prydain was in my mind-never understood why Ps and Qs seems more like Ps and Ks. I'll look at curtailing the sprawl. Not sure what the objection to 'awaits' is, tho' 67% of commenters have picked it up. Pleased you liked it,mac, and Lou....

Agree with mac on the sonics, particularly appreciated the bold alliteration of l1-appropriate for the bleak shore there. Not too sure the ephemera idea rides with the solidised moment. Enjoyed the poem, nice topic. Sorry you didn't find the print, may have vanished in somebody's backpack-some folk ...

Blue Man i' t' Moss The ochre scar curves over the moor ridge, clarty, knee deep so often, but today we walk on brick. Around us parched khaki ling, patched with wind-carded cotton grass, and by the path stars of pearlwort, occasional suns of tormentil. We flush pale moths from the rushes they float...

Liked the title, I'd begun to think 'Lie' was becoming obsolete, but it's right for this side of the wide Atlantic, and the almost stoic melancholy of your poem. Nice imagery of the flooded fields' ridge and furrow.

C.

Wow! You've caught the scene and atmosphere exactly and the language of the gulls dead on. I envy you your west facing coast, here we look due north, no Avalons or Lyonesses for us just sea (and ice) to the North Pole.
C.

I liked latest version and the feel of this, though like some others I have no idea what it is about, not sure whether I'm missing some deep esoteric reference , or whether it is as it seems on the surface. Liked the pairing of insolence and grace.
C.

Tend to agree with earlier comments on the abstractions and imagery. I enjoyed reading it, perhaps ignorance of the actual programme you based it on helps the arcane, mysterious atmosphere of the poem. I got a feeling of Lovecraft's world, the Chthulu horrors and all that. A pedantic point-last line...

Enjoyed the poem, wouldn't change a thing particularly liked the title's wordplay. Perhaps the 'cowardice' of the protagonist is needless, adders are much maligned as you will know, all this probably is what makes the title so ingenious. Adders thrive on the moors here, I encountered two in Wheeldal...

Thank you both for your comments. Not Quite Sure-I used sallow to indicate the watcher is in a dis-eased state of mind which makes the moon appear unhealthy; 'nvade'-perhaps 'pervade' less active might fit,I was using invade in the sense of intruding, encroaching rather than militarily. 'Idle skirti...

Thank you, David. Changing the gender-I'm so old that gender to me is only a grammatical term, though now it seems to have come to mean, additionally, what I as a one-time zoologist still refer to as sex. I find it curious to be asked my gender rather than my sex when filling in forms. Russian has g...

Thanks Steve. Your 1st thoughts are to the point... 'a patterned silence' extends the idea of the silence, I need to think about that a little more; 'the patterned silence' has other connotations -could then refer more obviously to the calmer years preceding WW1 and the events following October 1917...

Thank you, Seth, for your comments. Yes-very careless punctuation. I've written a revised version which includes the required full stop. I've also puzzled a long time over this section of the poem, and am still not happy - the core meaning of 'stranno' is 'strange', 'odd'- French translations have '...

Ива И дряхлый пук дерев. Пушкин А я росла в урожной тишине В прохладной децкой молодного века. И не был мил мне голос человека, А голос ветра был понятен мне. Я лопухи любила и крапиву, Но больше всех серебряную иву. И благодарная, она жила Со мной всю жизнь, плакучими ветрями Бессонницу овейвала сн...

Thank you for your comment, Steve. Certainly, Kunitz and most other translators use 'dawn' . The first two lines could be tweaked, trying to retain A's rhyme scheme, to something like: They carried you off at dawn I walked behind like one who mourns While gaining the connotations you mention, I thin...

Really enjoyed this. I am with Luce, the sustained eroticism of the first version seems to me to give greater power to the poem.

regards,c.

Very neatly done, epigrammatic.
regards,c.

Crayon, thanks for the comments. Liked tangents touched my humerus; metaphor/essential- perhaps you wd accept analogyanalogous, to me the seeming was the point of the comparison (narrator's point of view). I was introduced to asymptotes and other delights such as abscissae when we were taught elemen...

This made me smile. Simultaneously succinct, witty and profound. One pedantic nit-the specific epithet in binomial zoological names is always lower case- Should be Tyrannosaurus rex- ICZN rules OK.
With best wishes, c.

Seth, Thank you for your suggestion; the first line will go -I was striving for some symmetry, but overdid it. Crayon, I was using metaphor-the asymptote here is no more mathematical than a blanket of snow is woollen, the ticking time-line moving towards, but never seeming to reach, the dawn I hoped...

I'm with JJ on this, your form has captured the film very well, a light touch with a profound clout at the end.
Regards c.

Thank you all for reading this and for your comments. Lou -excellent suggestion, tho' my subconscious works best in the half aware time around waking up I think JJ may have solved this tautology, ray-so my thanks JJ Thanks for that observation mac, not too much alliteration I hope Grateful for your ...

Wakefulness The monotonous clock ticks on. I watch the sallow moon invade the house millimetre by millimetre, fall onto the window sill pool on the carpet crawl over the duvet idle along the skirting on the wall dawdle through the doorway micrometre by micrometre, and withdraw. The clock ticks on cl...

Liked the staccato run of monosyllables, and the li alliteration, and the general hardness of the sounds. I saw this (no doubt mistakenly) as a metaphor for a hard life, character refined in the fire and all that. Like David I look forward to the reveal.
Regards, c

Excellent poem, just the right emotional tone and register for the subject. It spoke directly to me as my grandfather was badly wounded at the 3rd Battle of Ypres serving with the N Staffs Regiment. Appreciated the irony of ll1-2 in the last verse, the waving hand is told powerfully here.
Regards, c.

David , you've invented a wee new genre- a shaggy god story.
regards, c.