Poetry Forum

I am still trying to make something of this, even if it's only an even bigger sow's ear.

Hi Cynwulf. That's a pretty interesting nom de plume (let's say pen-name, to keep it A-S) - I thought it had an Anglo-Saxon ring, and after googling I see it does. I rather liked this. I don't really see the moonlight dripping in eddies - it doesn't move like that, does it? I don't mind "the ro...

Good to see you back, Stuart, and in such typical vein - it's always concept albums, never just songs with you. Still, I like the concept albums. I haven't got time to take the whole thing in yet, so I'll take it a piece at a time. Which is unfortunate because, although I like most of it (a lot), I ...

That's what I was thinking. But I couldn't bring myself to press Play.

This is another pretty good one, isn't it? Well done again!

And not sure how much the closing couplet adds, or whether the sudden biblical moment is needed. Me neither, but Golgotha means (I think) "place of the skull", which I thought was quite fun in the context. "[H]ere upon the heights" is Wordsworth, of course - don't you just love ...

Terrific sense of menace in your first eight lines, Ian, which I think (sadly) is somewhat dissipated in the final six. That first section is great, though.

Cheers

David

P.S. This exercise, after a slow start, seems to be turning out a treat.

Jane, your traveller sounds both bewildered and harried, as though he's being browbeaten along the road. You've caught that nicely, but lines 4-5 are my favourites.

Cheers

David

S1 and 2 are beautiful Larry, but 3 feels incomplete. Is the title in the same key as the poem? Really love that opening. I agree with Brian here, Larry. The opening sentence meanders along in quite a convoluted manner, but it's still lovely. I felt a warm breeze, lightly freighted with the scent o...

461 Ocean Boulevard? Another album I caught up with about 20 years late. It's a good one.

No choice, not really, so not truly a crossroads: there is only forward - perhaps a little trifling with dates and eta's, but it's merely coyness, here upon the heights, brim-full with potential energy, before the headlong fall down that narrow way into an unquiet world. This breached Golgotha will ...

I've been sidetracked from Les lately, trying to finish a Selected Louis MacNeice I bought. Will be back to him soon. (He's clearly the better poet, and there aren't many around that can hold a (Roman) candle to him.)

I didn't find it incomplete (although additional miniatures would, of course, be most welcome) Good-oh, but I can't come up with any others that I like, and I think it's just the image itself that I want. Tweaked, of course. Tintoretto is in there because of the Venetian connection, but I don't thi...

twoleftfeet wrote:Does bars have anything to do with the zoo at the end?

I was wondering that too.

Antcliff wrote:I thought that many folk/jazz classics would pop into my head..not yet.

I was just going to say ... I can't think of any more! And I thought that my mind would be full of crossroads-related songs. (Valiantly not googling them yet.)

Wow. Cosmically overblown, but sometimes that's a good thing. At first - on just one reading so far, sorry about that, I know it deserves more - I thought it was erudite fun with planets (and marbles), then I thought it was a massive metaphor for a doomed relationship, finally it appeared to be an e...

It's actually - and, I wouldn't be surprised to hear, intentionally so - a good summary of the opening of The Divine Comedy. Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, of course, but your fourth region, full of "the ditherers, / the still pathless, / the lost in indecision", is this: "Before enterin...

A big beast to bag, Seth! You'll be needing a ghillie before long.

Lovely, Jane. Not a self-portrait, is it? I suspect you're even more formidable - or, as the French say, formidable - than she is.

David

Could you take the subject matter further? here it adds to a sense...Elph mentions..of incompleteness. I'm with him in requesting a bit more. Ah, gents ... you got me bang to rights. This was supposed to be longer, but I seemed to be stuck, so I cut it short to see if it would work. Perhaps it woul...

K-J, I guess I did intend for condescension to come across, however perhaps poetry isn't the time or place for such patent commentary. This is something I'm learning. Hi Luke. Condescension is always tricky, as it's so hard for it not to come across in an unappealing manner. (You may be experiencin...

REVAMPED AGAIN How oddly like the dome of Santa Maria della Salute is Manx Gas's tank on South Quay, silhouetted against the pinks and blues of a chilly Tintoretto. A sluggish life is creeping back into the maritime quarter. A swan unfolds himself and, with his inamorata, steps fastidiously into the...

Yes, the anon comp was great fun. I'd love to do it again but my net access might be spotty the next couple of weeks (I'll be in deepest Patagonia) so I can't admin it. Could we wait til I get back then I can admin it again? I'll see if I still have the spreadsheet I devised last time. Sounds like ...

I'm in, or intend to be.

I'm in, or intend to be.