Poetry Forum

Hmm. The ultimate threat: "We know where you write." Anyway, well done. I'm glad you are sending it off; it deserves a rounder audience.

Much clearer. Even I get it (I think). Is that good?

Swing: not rough at all; you posted a balanced, thoughtful review that gave me a useful perspective. I know what you mean by ". . . how involved do I feel with this . . . ?" I have often sat through a reading that did not connect with me, nor I with it. I suppose that is the reason so many...

It must have happened, but I have never seen a hyperlink in a poem before. What a startling premise.

That aside, the rigid structure comes off as quite fluid and casual.

Nice one.

Echoes of the grief of Lear.

Arco, I'm going to be pedantic as hell here; the following stems from my encounters with several profs and later work in typesetting: I do mean hyphen. I was fairly certain that you meant to use a dash, but a dash is an em, which looks like this: " — " not a hyphen, which looks li...

After a half-dozen visits to this piece, I am still puzzled by a great deal; for example, in just the first stanza, the definite article in the first line, besides ceating an allusion to "midnight at the oasis", gives undue prominence to the second line, particularly "with", whic...

I have come back several times to this piece, intrigued by the shift out of the superb first three and a half lines, puzzled by the last line — which you finally explained, Kris; maybe therein lies a problem to be considered — only now do I understand what to say about it: you have...

Distancing Lingering too late over the words — incantations scratched onto these pages, rubrics drawn from the topography of my shifting brain — resisting the allure of veering off into microsleep in the flames of whatever whore of a dream wants to entertain me — I am reluctant to leave the fading ...

I am sitting here secure within the walls of my home office basking in the reaction to this piece. One of the elements of the whole Internet experience is that before these forums came into existence, this piece would have sat in a manilla folder or envelope for several years, making the rounds from...

Thanks, Cam and Koz: I have removed the caps, thus improving the piece. I don't know what I was thinking; perhaps it is the anaesthetic I had on Friday. (Can't use that one too often . . . .)

Garrison In walls we find comfort: even the softly swaying opalescent cloth partitition draped between beds in a ward, as in some comic Gable and Colbert flick, gives us some solace barricading sight, if not sound, dignity, if not security: the grey woman in the wheelchair clutches her purse over h...

We all are. Karma is the fine print. 'Nuff said?

This was amusing and intriguing when I read it and didn't comment, and it's still amusing after I read your backgrounding and finally can comment. Those frescos in the entryway to the little church in San Gimignano are almost as horrific as the exhibits in the well-advertised museum of tortures near...

Fun. A couple of rough spots rhythmically.

"I sit the missus down, and/ keen to avoid a conflict" does not really transit to the next stanza.

The dialect draws the character nicely, as do the details. One of the nice touches is the "roomer"'s self-concept. Nice little vignette.

Tying a rhinoceros into politics is very apropos for a Canadian to read, as we have the joy in Canada of a wonderful party with origins in Quebec, where they take their politics trés serieusement . With a lovely twist of humour, they have originated the Rhinoceros Party, which wants to, among other ...

While I did not "get" several of the images, not having been part of the motorized model plane group (we used elastics to power ours), the piece worked on several levels for me, particularly the box brownie reference. I found that whole thing evocative: I think it was the details that buil...

Something interesting happens in the first few lines of this: In-between what’s right and wrong your death sits snugly as a gun. A derringer pocket toy, fancy but bereft of joyous interludes that may or may not include, strangling yourself. — it is a compelling observation balancing the sel...

I compare the experience to discovering that Dickinson's works could be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas".

Fun.

Sorry, I promised . . . .

Or what about "cooling carcasses" — that double whammy occured to me as I was rewriting stanza 1 . . . .

Maybe I should call in Quentin&Uma.

Perhaps "Does he see a copperhead?"?

Perhaps I should go to another image. I think of Norman Bates not bothering a fly . . . .

I dithered with the moulting/molting — my spellchecker (which is mainly American) protested the former. I prefer the former, so back it goes. Thanks for the "l". I appreciate the comments regarding the first stanza, caps, "undisturbing". I shall think about the caps, because I wa...

Polite — second draft. He smiles gently, and all is still: a fly squats briefly on his forehead above his good eye then investigates the cooling carcass. He has finished his work been paid, cleaned his blade, holstered the hammer, wiped the red spatter off his arms; the pig lies mute nearb...

Lia: I appreciate your interest in my work. I am in the process of mulling the summer's harvest of two scribblers of verses which are mostly in need of toughening up. If you look back a couple of months here (June, I think), you will find some of my stuff. I shall post a one of this summer's pieces,...