04-22-2017, 06:25 PM
(04-22-2017, 05:35 PM)ellajam Wrote: Hi, Tom, a strong and moving piece. I like the title, it does double duty, the actual scattering and the separation. Some notes:Hi ella,
(04-20-2017, 09:43 PM)tectak Wrote: How fateful comes the end of days; the dust and ash of yearsThanks for the read, it sticks with me.
in thinnest layer.... a mica glint, a chalked blurred line upon dark moss.
A fine opening, love the mica/chalk/moss, a perfect description. Not a great fan of fateful. It says what it should but not in a way that sparks my interest the way much in the rest of the poem does.
Here dropped the wind, the very air he used to have and hold until
some prodding, pointed purpose drove it up and out of him...
I like dropped, it takes me with it. Have and hold is interesting, married to life for life, and I like the physicality of the separation.
cream-curdled words, how erudite his prose...to burst upon us all.
Cream-curdled reads sour to me, confusing.
There is a silence on this hill, as deep and high as some inverted lake
wherein we weep into our piled up tears, unseen through subterfuge
or watered eyes; we feel no runs upon pale cheeks, so drenched are we.
Love the inverted lake, makes me stop and think. It may be wrong but I might like a colon after subterfuge, the next line is the result. Of watered eyes seems a stilted waste, we've already wept and the rest of the line is so perfect.
Up swirls one stirring current in the aether that was still, an image
smoked from long-cold flames, alive again against brass-blasted sky.
I'm having a hard time with brass-blasted, maybe I need more time to get it.
It is not him. Some other spirit none of us yet know has claimed him now.
I like the ending, it sort of makes the title moot but such is life.
tectak
2017
all eaten. I am now seriously worried about fateful but struggling to find an alternative which conveys inevitability and acceptance in one word....?....fate filled?
Read reply to rich on his comments...there was a typo after subterfuge. It should read "....subterfuge OF watered eyes..." I hope that makes it far clearer but I have my doubts
.Brass-blasted is unfair of me. The sky sometimes glows with a brassy hue when thin upper strata clouds are skirmished by strong wind and the sun is out. The colour is metallic, like brass, the effect is of a blast of air. I see it often.
Cream curdled is difficult. I really did want to indicate a tinge of envy from the gathered souls at the scattering...sour grapes from poetic peers...yet envy nonetheless. How else to describe the source of prose but as cream and the the words as curdling out of it, then? Ahem....I could have said clotted cream but perhaps that would not have done it. Aw, the hell....I DID have clotted to start with....confession.
Best,
tectak

