New York Pitch Conference Reviews, Algonkian Writer Conferences, and Poetry Forums

not sure just what has happened here, but rightly or wrongly, I feel as if I am somehow
involved. If that's so, my apologies.
Congrats to both of you for placing the the IBPC. You done good.

MV, exactly. Ken, if you start with that and work down (forgetting all the historical detail) from that; --the first stanza is self-pity. Not good.-- but oh, the last stanza, and for a cap at the bottom those searing two lines about Mozart. And leave off "me" ("a few frail words will survive") It is...

gettin' there. I love fog and smoke, but the first two lines of that stanza could be elimnated and the last two lines attached to the previous one. Try it. I think you can drill down too hard (you in the general, not the personal sense) on poems like this, the temptation is almost to write them in r...

Just found this, and I agree with you and everyone else about this--it's a difficult, sad poem, but (and this is important) it's a poem that had to be written. Friend of mine has a theory about such things--he said that poems are like beads on a string, and they all have to be written--good bad and ...

This has possibilities. At this point it feels like you're trying to pack too much inormation into too little a space, and too much drama gets lost in the process. I'd be inclined to let one soldier stand for all of them. Make their story into his story, if you see what I mean, let him represent all...

I can relate to weird dreams, it's like they're shouting at us about something
but we have no idea what "LOOK OUT" means in the dream world. It can also
be extremely hard to translate that kind of surreal experience into language.

I agree, although 'mean something' can be a slippery slope. It may be fraught with meaning to the writer, who is often standing in the middle of it all, but reads as verbiage to a reader. Often just a title can clarify a work. It doesn't have to be a total mystery. =) I was asked, years back (on thi...

Manifesto honor the dead where they rest at last in wel-dug graves or public pits no priest no blessing only the dark no one wants to believe in only silence where there should be ringing voices, alight and welcome-- the final indignity: not the loss of a life but the loss of a promised afterlife ca...

Frank, it's okay. I just didn't want this to turn into a holy war.

Kenneth, thanks for the comments. I agree, it's way too easy to get preachy, and very hard to see it in one's own work.

I shall take this back to my desk and see what I can do.

whew. thank you. I know sometimes content overrides form, it can make our eyes water, or our heart slow a bit; in a way it's a painting with words. Some people think Jackson Pollock was a great painter, what he did with color, to them, superceded the technique involved. The rest of us peer at it, an...

And to be fair I was looking for a crit of the poem, not a crit of the contents, as stated,
or the opinions expressed. That was all. My apologies.

my sweet, one of us is right and one of us is wrong. The only way to find out for sure
is when we die, and then one of us will be horribly surprised.
And that in itself, is a topic for another place.
If this offends, should I take the poem down?

nteresting. I never considered that before, but it does sort of leave the whole thing open to interpretation
doesn't it.

Yep. good point. Ours is the full version, complete with surprise endings...=)

Manifesto unhallowed being the condition of disgrace, of never to be redeemed to look and not see unhallowed in every eye but one bury the dead where they lie in shallow graves or public pits no priest no blessing only the dark no one wants to believe in only silence where there should be ringing vo...

She learned at last to be content with silence to keep the hand open the eyes steady the heart whole. And when he went away she learned to be content with nothing where something had been; the afternoons were fine, the evenings could be endured; but mornings, when the sky was deep with promise and c...

She learned at last to be content with silence to keep the hand open the eyes steady the heart whole. And when he went away she learned to be content with nothing where something had been; the afternoons were fine, the evenings could be endured; but mornings, when the sky was deep with promise and c...

true, and I love my husband. But that doesn't mean we have to approve
their politics. Nor they ours.

Lol. Don't get me started on that hot mess in the white house.
My husband would be fine with your brother. Can I send him to you?

Thanks, Bob. While I was constructing this, I kept thinking
of the old Hitchcock movie, "39 Steps" and the way he used music
to set the scenes. It was a fascinating technique. So this is
a bit of tongue-in-cheek homage to that.

When They Make The Movie of Your Life You open the mailbox with a gesture so commonplace that only the sound of high-pitched violins would alert the audience that a pivotal, life-changing scene is about to unfold. In the morning after the return mail has been sent--to the accompaniment of more violi...

Meenas, not sure where you're going with this, I find it difficult to follow. The language is "off", and it needs some work on the punctuation. Too many personal pronouns when you could probably reduce them to no more than one per stanza, if even that. No sure where the "tryst' in the title comes in...

::smiles:: thank you, meenas

I know this is old news by now, but in rereading it, I think I'd be inclinded to change "my new lover" to 'she" and let the reader discover her by the convo in the rest of the poem. Either way, I like it. The language is spot on.

And thank you for the nomination: (tell me if I'm doing this right) Judy Thompson thompson_wp@tds.net Yes, this is my own original work and unpublished I have no other commitments regarding this poem on other sites: Across the River we stand at the edge of a field, empty except for new fallen snow a...