The Poets' Graves Workshop

In a way 'dumb' is the odd one out here.
'blind' and 'deaf' imply over-riding the senses, the evidence,
but 'dumb' is holding back the voice.
If the last line was 'blind and deaf' the title could be 'Dumb'.
J

Hi Tony - a great subject to celebrate, and I like the clunky rhythm and rhyme. Just a few nigglets 'with out' one word L8 - the phrasing suggests it was something to do with the letters being capitals that made them difficult to erase - I have a feeling that back then the council just didn't bother...

Thank you mac, Not, JJ, Miles and sleepy and shame on me for not responding earlier - Miles, thank you for delving down the board and pulling this one up. I suppose I'm a bit stuck - S2 is definitely substandard, but I've been struggling to reconnect with whatever blast of oofle dust blew this out o...

Hi Tristan - Is there an intentional ambiguity in
the last 'it'? - i.e. it could also mean the act of
voting.
I liked the way that made me think about the
communal narrative of a democracy.
Jules

Hi Mike - I like it. The V2 much tighter.
Is a box car the same as a go kart?
And the 'justice' I understand as a perverse way of taking it out on
himself, destroying his own world, siding with the demons?

Jules

Yes, a bit of a bracing triumph. Not sure if the title captures it. Sent me to my copy of Rattlebag to dig out Masefield's 'Sea-Change'. The one puzzler for me is the word 'temper' in the last stanza . . . the wind is being all sprightly and frivolous, the ocean suggests that when they get together ...

I preferred prayer to kneeling - it seemed to convey
the different order time takes on in those moments
but a bit quirky and still leaving the direction of forgiveness
unclear.
Maybe 'candle wax contrition'?

J

Hi Mike - I'm a bit held up by 'sealed his hex' You can put a hex on someone but this seems too big a leap for me. Plus it's not clear who 'he' is. It might just work if the N is the target i.e. 'sealed my hex' or maybe 'placed her hex'. But a great sinister feel achieved with your minimal syllables...

Hi Ray, Vegusto Pungent isn't too bad, but weirdly it's no longer available online. 'Our friend' solves that confusion and works fine for me. Wondered about changing 'our worktop' to 'my worktop'. Don't think I would have got the logical premise without your explanation. My solution (S3): Alas I lac...

Thanks Ray, Tony and mac R & T - you might have a point - 'lovely' is sufficient in itself. I've put up an alt version giving these words their own space. mac - yes, 'plucking straight from the face' has this cloud connotation of plucking victory from defeat. 'fierce', much as I like the 'face' echo...

Hi mac - I like the play between the fabled childlike cosiness/complacency of the dormouse and the extremeness of the adult stricture - safe inactivity but something is majorly wrong with the world. I'm not too sure about the ambiguity as to who made the mistake and who requires forgiveness - if it'...

Tristan - thanks for rescuing this one - really glad you liked it. I agree 'straight' wasn't quite hitting the mark. On the literal front I was trying to capture the mix of boldness (compulsory optimism) and desperation that impels the natural world forward. Have revised with 'fierce' and split the ...

Hi Not - developing well How about 'they slip like silverfish down there' And instead of 'cemetery' - 'a row of starveling plants' I'm not too keen on the softening paper, following from the drowned metaphor it misdirects to suggest a real flood. Could be 'crumble'? And maybe move 'leave' down to L3...

green lines fingering the wind - close clad in a thin bark skin - blackbirds playing kiss chase - plucking berries straight from winter's cold face V2 Where would we be without the rhythm of reason the revelation of rhyme - green lines fingering the wind - close clad in a thin bark skin - blackbird...

Hi Stuart, a lot to like here - a wealth of emotion hammered into trite trimeters - a sense of language failing but feelings raging. You break the rhythm in a couple of places - first in L6 which I think works, but L7 +10 not so good (perhaps 'You're' instead of ''Were' in L7?). I'm still trying to ...

No cheese! Nothing from China! …Is that possible? I like S1 - know plenty of households where the family pet is pointedly referred to as 'belonging to' (i.e. the responsibility of) one person (the one who campaigned for it). And a good title - moral qualms, moral queasiness But the central formula s...

Thanks Ray - given me pause for thought as usual.
What I know is the song and I think you are right,
I was drifting into soft focus.
Have enroled Rick Wakeman for V4.

Jules

Great beginning, middle and end, but seemingly from
different poems - almost a Burroughs cut and paste.
The two opening stanzas my favourite, partly because I'm
imagining the bear as the N.
Jules

I think there's something wrong with the rhythm of L3, all the others start with a punch. A possible alt: 'Humans vote, a cull condoned'? I'm in two minds about 'biome' - the rhythm is definitely off in that line too, but if you can sort that it might work. Now you've explained the plot it seems to ...

I get the double meaning of 'penned' now,
which works well there.
You could almost stop at 'deliciousness' -
it seems to go downhill from there.
I can sense you feeling your way towards
a resolution but at present the explanations are taking
us away from the immediacy.
J

Thanks for the feedback mac. I have fixed the question marks. I'm not sure about 'nutter/mutter' - I do worry about these things. It could be an idiom that is shifting. The other day my nephew (mid 20's) described one of his friends as 'a complete nutter' - using it as a positive epithet meaning a b...

Thank you Sid and Not - just the push I needed Sid - I'm really attached to my three 'olds' I want quite a folky almost naive feel - like Cat Stevens' songs I'm assuming all readers know this is about 'Morning Has Broken' 'blossoming' - thank you! 'far-below restaurant' - I think I need the family r...

Hi Sid - a lively description of one writer's way of 'eating an orange' but it makes much more sense to me as a metaphor if you put it into reverse i.e. start with a sticky mess and arrive at a perfect orange. Just a thought. In a way I can see how the most poetic thing here is the whole tactile ick...

Brilliant news JJ!
As soon as I saw the title it immediately evoked the poem - partly I think because that is the word the N himself would
use, though only in private to himself - and it made me think of the open lakeland 'a's too.
Best,
Jules

Old Cat Stevens' old old song Farjeon's hymn made marvelously his own Late blossoming hippy sat upon the open sky roof of his father's Soho restaurant Steven catches the gold-cum-silver evening sun Steven catches wind-carried West End rehearsals old musicals, long gone From Cyprus and Sweden Steven ...