John, your forms always make me happy, and it's a joy seeing you gain comfort and facility with them--things that sounded a little stilted in earlier years are sounding smooth and natural now.
Quakers Wood is lovely; it makes me feel the magic of the place. I don't know if it's me or you, but I feel like this could've lapsed into sentimentality and somehow didn't, just moved me instead. "Wren" and "rook" are two sounds that go together beautifully. My first impulse was to say I preferred the first version, but I think they work best side-by-side, with the same character visiting the scene first with his family, in cheery sunlight, and second alone, in regretful moonlight. It's interesting how much the switch from first to third person does to shift the mood... there's a pane in front of me in the second that I didn't notice at all in the first. I picture them on two facing pages of a book.
Thank you for introducing me to the tricube. I notice that you've added more formal rules than I found in the online description I googled, by repeating lines across stanzas. The repetitiveness of the form fits the theme of a child's questions, which are at once novel and repetitive. (Also... that's how inquiry has worked my whole life. Questions are a terrifying hydra. I also love them.)
Cross My Palm makes me a bit relieved, content-wise; a lot of American churches are still holding services, which I believe to be deeply immoral under current circumstances. (I feel the same about those of my fellow polyamorous people who are still seeing all their partners in person... this transcends political divisions.) I love "praise karaoke/ pray nobody's listening"; the Catholic services of my youth were much the same. Happy belated Easter.
Coronavirus House Party reminds me that your government is in almost as dismal shape as mine! What is there to do about it but write satirical limericks and engage in local politics? I like your good mean limericks about politicians; it feels alive. Your Starmer rhymes remind me that our voices sound different; that's one that doesn't rhyme in American, but does in English! It's still my favorite.
Some really lovely sounds in To a Skylark: the little wing-whir of Spirithill/ shutter speed; the clipped consonants in "amongst the stumps of sweetcorn stalks cut short" (such an enviable line!). And that last line is a very nice encapuslation.
I like the variety that "glistening" and "fluttering" bring to your monorhyme, since the stress of the last syllable is perceptibly less than the stress of the first. That keeps it lively, and also reminds me of the rhymes in Hopkins' The Windhover
I enjoyed how the title of What Did Pink Floyd Say About Education seemed like a cheap joke at the start, but then began making more sense to me halfway through. Well played! I am glad you gave us a version of Kitty and the Purple Cactus Field; I was going to complain of curiosity. (Always with the questions!) If you don't mind, I may read it to my sweetheart as one of their good-night bedtime poems; it feels perfect for that.
Your American Sentence makes me wonder a little whether N is erecting the tent in the backyard to amuse his family, or to get some alone time!
I love the metaphor implicit in the cherry tree from Easter Sunday 2020, but am finding myself curious about what it's a metaphor for. (Still, always better to write an open poem than a closed poem.) I see in it a way my own relationship with organized religion could have gone, had I been more faithful. I also see various friends' relationships with family members who treat them badly, but whom they have difficulty cutting out, because how do you cut out family?
I love the list of transgressions in I Stand on the Left, especially the litany of marker-related sins in S2. Very timely ending.
Something About Eels is brilliant, and if I didn't see that it was a response to a challenge, I would've thought that it arose as a perfectly natural response to be hemmed-in by staying at home. I am, to be honest, very very relieved to live by myself. (I understand that the voice of the poem is not exactly the same as the voice of you, and that there are many yous, but wow, the voice in that poem is compelling.)
It is so good to get caught up on your thread.
You can call me Featherless, Biped, Featherless Biped, variations on the themes of featherlessness and bipedalism... or Ray. I'm going by Ray these days.
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Originally Posted by JFN
I laughed at the different pyjamas: brilliant!
