7 Commandments My Child Should Know (after Tonya Ingram)

[Nicolette]

This is really great stuff. A moving and completely coherent description of mental illness.

Thank you

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I don't give a fig about each section not containing some equivalent of ''Thou shalt...'' Almost all were such that the reader might have extracted an insight -and what else is expected? -such as the theme of something ceasing, such as the father being around, or the poet being a poet, allowing space for , and even calling existence, some other stuff.

I enjoy fragmentary writing now, and similarly, a conversational style. I should not worry too much over that. There is a danger, of course, that it will throw up the odd hackneyed phrase --because, apart from those who breathe the air of Parnassus, that is how we speak.

I have been rather distracted while reading-several times - by the fact that I had lunch with a South African bloke. As there is a Nicolette on Another Poetry site, who is South African, I read it in a kind of phoney S African accent, and doing so, noticed that several locutions which are used here, (e.g. ''See...'' ) were peppering the talk of my lunch-friend. So naturally, coming across the typo ''since'' for ''sense'', confirmed all this fantasy, and my distraction.

I see you are already pruning, and re-jigging. At risk of being banned from these Elysian Fields, I shall not add to the constructive criticism already tendered, save to say, that while I don't think the ankle is important, I have never heard the term ''retract anchor''. ''Weighing''' anchor would be more normal. Either way, it is a poem well worth working on.

Wooooooow! Thank you