Woe is Donner

[kristalynn]

I love this one. (Grey socks...) All those greys and the "silvery" at the end shimmers.

[Scrow]

Your American sentence is bittersweet.

I am currently tending a 'rescued' caterpillar (from the middle of the main road). Don't ask. It's a very lively caterpillar and I had to carry it around the pharmacy whilst it tried to escape from a small plastic bag. It is now on my desk, in a plastic box, being picky about its preferred foliage of choice.

I hope your garden tendings are (relatively) caterpillar free.

Sarah

[JFN]

Donna, I like they way you draw little segments of personal history through N's musings about the shades of socks. The way it moves through from mould to seizure to wood stove ash without feeling any need for elaboration or explanation works really well.

If I went out into my garden at the moment it would be mostly to pull up the dead plants, but I like the sentiment if the AS, with that suggested undercurrent of the unexplained overbearing thoughts about death. It's effective.

John

[Jordan]

Reading your poem on the feckless garden I kept nodding my head in agreement. It was too familiar. The marigolds I put next to the tomatoes
failed to keep the bugs away; my squash got blight and the one watermelon I managed to grow burst after a hard rain. Gardening I think is
intended to instruct us and not reward us except with new lessons every year. Really enjoyed reading this and a great ending.

[Donner]

Thanks, Andrea, Sarah, John and Jordan. As I said, gardening this year has been a totally different experience.

A short one this morning.

Donna

[Donner]

Covenants

Socially distanced, the members
of the housing development
weed the easement slope
between the sidewalk and fence.

[Donner]

American Sentence 2

She almost wished he'd died so she could make sense of his sudden coldness.

[Cameron Clark]

AS 1 — I enjoyed the repetition of "think" in this one. And, yeah, ok, the meaning.
Covenants — I'm thinking the title is doing all of the heavy lifting here, can there be some element within the poem that is also supernatural / surreal?

AS 2 — my favourite of yours. A good example of the form well-handled.

Hope this helps.

p.s. you appear to have mixed up August and April in the title. Unless of course you are experiencing huge shifts in the months of the year. Which is, judging from the current events right now, not that unbelievable.

[Scrow]

Hi Donna,

Today's American Sentence is loaded with double-meanings, in the sense of physical and emotional coldness, and their links with death. Very, very clever indeed, and has an echoing impact. You are VERY skilled at these.

I also enjoy the multiple meanings in covenants, hinging on the title, which brings that sense of biblical invocation (I'm a dunce with the Bible, but even I know what 'covenant' means in the context of religion), and then the legal sense, and then the 'informal agreement' sense. So we can read the action/activity in three ways, separately and/or synchronously. I'm going to read it synchronously as that paints a hopeful picture. Oooh, and I also like the way the action works as an antithesis to the 'socially distanced' line, and the sonics in weed/easement and the meanings they carry, too (which I'm reading as easement in terms of easing pain/worry). Sorry to unpick this so much, but it's a very skilled, effective poem so it just happened : )

I send good thoughts to your gardening travails during September. I hope they're more rewarding and easeful than the rest of 2020.

take care, and as always, good to read you this month,

Sarah

[Donner]

Thanks, Cameron and Sarah. Cameron - Thanks for catching the April/August mix-up. (What month is it?) "Covenants" is more of a germ of an idea that a poem, which you caught, but that's how it goes some days. Sarah - I discovered when I first started writing American Sentences that I tend, oddly enough, to think in 17-syllable chunks. when I went back through my notes and ideas for poems I'd jotted down, a majority of them were 17 syllables. Why, I don't know, but it makes the AS a fun form for me to play with. (Except for those occasions when I count the wrong number of finger taps. : )

And thanks to everyone who participated this month, as always, your comments have been helpful and generous. I'll be catching up with thread fluffing tomorrow.

Donna

[JFN]

Donna, I finally have a bit of time to come back and catch up. I like the timely image of the neighbourhood all pitching in, at appropriate distances, to tidy things up. It's very socially collaborative, which is nice.


The last AS is really superb. I love the unexpectedness of the end.


It's been good to read your work this week.


John