The Poets' Graves Workshop

https://poeticareview.com/janet-harper/

The very personal concluding line is electric. I had to check out the painting.

mothers bones withered
but not their tongues that lusted
with tasty gossip

My immediate response: I thought it was fun and muchly enjoyed.

Thanks for taking a look Pauline. My attempt at humour :oops: In my head, a T-shirt washes up on the shoreline with the message of living life to the full, but for N. it has either shrunk in the water or is not the right size or N. has not the 'personality' for it to 'fit' - perhaps the message has ...

Rather like the rhymes in this:

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/eden-rock/

Like ghosts they trace what stood that night in each now dustless space. Intriguing Jackie, but I'm still outside the poem at the moment. Something been stolen from the garden? But the transgression, the weight of guilt, seems greater judging by the behaviours. Since it is a Christmas theft, perhap...

But does the humour detract from the point made?

the holes in the carpet where love wiped the dirt off its feet, the closet door I leave open so that my clothes don't get scared These lines are from a poem by Deborah Ketai called Sanitized for Your Protection: http://www.millerspondpoetry.com/index.php/current-issue/vol23web3 I like a poem with a...

anyone can wear the mask..... but you can take it off

Tired of those ancient myths? Well, there's always pop culture

http://www.freezeraypoetry.com/kate-wilson.html

Of course, there is more than one mask theme playing out here.

exchange of profit
in leaf and root and branches
promises of blossom

hi Not Google tells me box was a mistranslation, which was interesting. Who blames the axe for the severed head? Just a thought. Felt the opening was restrained, but perhaps that was your intention? Who carried us into your house? The question here seemed to focus not on the object, but the person c...

I did wonder about abuse, but thought the showing of photos ruled that out.

Yes, there are many tragedies in the world Amadis, some get more press than others, some are written in history books, some are passed down from generation to generation.

I don't find the car metaphor an issue.

No one wants my love, but being wise was never an option.
I find a gas station and fill up the tank. I see a forgotten youth
grinning in the wing mirror.

Just a thought.

best

mac

what memories made
swimming that river border
because it was there

Hedgehogs sleep beneath last season’s rumpled sheets. Like the quaintness of that Eira. buttoned with buds is a lovely phrase. Phrasing such as pillows of hopelessness. and melancholic shadows feel overwritten to me. I draw the drapes across twilight, slump deeper into my pillows Just a thought for...

I like the ambush in a poem. I'm not keen on polemical poems. This poem takes an observation of a child/father interaction and delivers an extinction message. The title could have been more subtle, the label is the opposite of an ambush, and I may not have read the poem if I hadn't been checking-out...

I often strive to write an upbeat poem Perry, a life-affirming one, but it has proven more an ambition than an actuality. Sometimes I wonder if it is the medium. I certainly find painting a more positive experience. Perhaps end with that familiar consolation from Tennyson: https://www.poetryfoundati...

compound interest
for validation is how
much money you make

Thanks Ray and Adamis. That sounds great, at first glance, but I don't know what it, or the rest of the poem, means. In a sense, some self-mocking. I've used the critique mantra of more sight/sound/taste/touch/smell, and less abstraction of thought, but if those experiences can't be rationalised, to...

ray miller wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 16, 2020 9:04 am

I'd be wanting to keep "his wife is graveyard stone". Wouldn't "Each day he paints those times..." be truer?

Yes, it would. Restored the wife. Thanks for revisiting Ray.

cheers

mac

Liked it Ray. The parallels and progression work for me. just find a height where they feel safe Just a thought Not because their brains fall out Agree with Eira, this is an expression that's right for the child context. I read the ambition/extrovert/exhibitionism of the older sister and the insecu...

I noticed this poet is not a Jones/Thomas/Williams etc, but the poem does reflect the superstitious minds of some Welsh upbringings (including mine).

The poem is called Capel Salem by Judith Wozniak:

https://www.cardiffreview.com/post/2020/08/10/capel-salem/

A number of summer re-reads persuaded me to re-visit the C20. My default is to say he/she was a 'writer of their time', but the anti-semitism of Scott's Ivanhoe just irritated as did the gender stereotypes (I know there are genre excuses). Dickens's idealisation of women, Esther in Bleak House , was...