10-02-2011, 07:13 AM
Edward, this is spectacular. Your opening lines are powerful, the direct address to Grief sets the tone of the poem so that we know the nostalgic wanderings of the next few stanzas are going to end with despair or tragedy. This is echoed in the final stanza, addressing K, demanding answers. The meter, though irregular, works perfectly against the rhymes (which are almost terza rima, only it breaks from L3 to L4 -- it doesn't bother me, I'm just mentioning it because that's what I do 
)
Of all your phrases, I like "barky logs" the best -- though honestly, that's just picking one slight favourite out of a dozen or more possibilities. Your repetition of certain words and phrases adds depth to the sea motif, giving the words an ebb and flow ("A thing of sea you are, of sea, eroding cliffs"). The one line I would change, purely for order of sounds, is S8 L2, for which I'd suggest:
Today beneath a chlorine Cross I lay, above a hundred more
-- this splits the rhyming words of today/lay and picks up assonance between lay/above
I really enjoyed this, thank you
)Of all your phrases, I like "barky logs" the best -- though honestly, that's just picking one slight favourite out of a dozen or more possibilities. Your repetition of certain words and phrases adds depth to the sea motif, giving the words an ebb and flow ("A thing of sea you are, of sea, eroding cliffs"). The one line I would change, purely for order of sounds, is S8 L2, for which I'd suggest:
Today beneath a chlorine Cross I lay, above a hundred more
-- this splits the rhyming words of today/lay and picks up assonance between lay/above
I really enjoyed this, thank you
It could be worse