30 Slices of Toast

[Steven]

Including these classics...


'O Toast! My Toast!'
'The Toaster'
'Toasting'
'A Black, Black Toast'
'A Toastday Poem'
'The Broken Toast'
'Let Toast Be Toast Again'
'I Taught Myself to Love Toast'
'Phenomenal Toast'
'Seeker of Toast'
'There is another toast'


1. Observatory
2. Fatten
3. Religiously
4. Tree
5. Recognizing Birdsong
6. The Explosion
7. Robins in January
8. Birthday
9. Eclipse
10. Transfiguration
11. Sleepy

[Featherless Biped]

Shall I compare thee to a slice of toast?
Thy wit is drier, crunchier, and better.
A breakfast lasts a half an hour at most
and summer's fridge runs often short of butter.

Happy NaPo!

[Steven]

Thank you...happy NaPoing to you, too!

[merelynn]

Jesus Crust, this is gonna be a good thread.

Happy NaPoMo!

[Arlene]

Did just laugh aloud...Very glad you're still here.

[5th column]

We raise a glass in honour of your arrival shouting '"Toast! Toast!"

[Emily Bronte]

There's some terrific stuff here steven!

I especially love "Fatten"; 'the pencil marks of winter turn to paint' gives me delightful shivers--such a beautiful line.

"Religiously" made me smile. The outdoor world could be a beautiful church

Cheers,

Mari.

[Featherless Biped]

I

Lovely to see the spring through your eyes in the atmospheric spring poems. I like how "Observatory" shifts from literal to metaphoric in S3, and I love the words "aconites" and "coppice". The gorgeous conceit in "Fatten" makes me think of impressionism. (I think of that school as painting scenes how they look, instead of how they are, if that distinction makes sense.) And your monorhyme stanzas in "Recognizing Birdsong" have the perfect form for their content. "Robins in January" takes the reader back to winter--a short, sweet, and clean scene.

"Religiously" (good idea to use the adverb rather than the adjective) is very different from my experience of church, but wonderful in its coziness--unusually welcoming for a poem whose "we" doesn't quantify over me.

"Tree" is gorgeous, and possibly my favorite of the bunch--both sides of the metaphor are apt, and the chiasmus structure works beautifully: the shape of the poem is "bird, flighty man, stolid man, tree". Perhaps a different title than "Tree", though, to keep the suspense?

"The Explosion" is also a keeper. That door is a great device--I suppose that in the poem, everything but the door has been slammed.

[Steven]

Neil, Mari, and Rachael, thanks for your kind words. I appreciate the time you've gone to make these useful comments.

[Steven]

Birthday


Follow
The munching path,
Clip the clapper bridge,
Unfreeze the flower born today:
April.

[JFN]

Steven, lovely image of the first blooms off Spring in Observatory. Enjoyed this a lot.

The drawing back of winter is excellently displayed in Fatten. Particularly likes S1 here.

Great opening and closing lines in Tree. I loved the conciet of this one.

You've written before about the loss of birdsong in the ever decreasing countryside, and here you've written about the lack of recognition by the younger generation (not that I can judge). Raises the question of how we will monitor the reduction if they are all heard as a single sound. It's a topic you always do well, and this is no exception.

The Explosion is an interesting take on the recognition of sound as well. Wherever it's also a comment on the recent Brussels attack, out some other occasion (real or imaginary) doesn't really matter. It works well.

Lovely cinquain too. There's something praying about saying clip the chapter bridge out loud.

A good month so far. Keep them coming.

John

[anenome]

Robins creates a lovely picture, scaffolding really does its work here!