PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

This poem is so deep that I had to open it up in a second window in order to make my comment.  Patriciajj recently mentioned James Dickey to me, and I was re-reading him a bit, along with comments from some scholars who suggested that Dickey's most powerful poems were written in the short lines, which was his style before he extended, attenuated, and loosened his customary line.  And your poem demonstrates that same kind of power, as well as once again evidencing J. V. Cunningham's belief that a short poem, artistically compressed to hold more than the sum of its space suggests, is the most classic kind of poem one can write. 

  I also applaud your use of two very powerful verbs that bookend the poem, "thrum" and "coalesced." These give the poem a very supple and active presence.  But one must also notice the tenses of the two verbs.  Thrum is in present tense, as we watch the process unfold before our eyes and ears.  But coalesced is placed in the past tense, in a grammatical construction that implies a finished completion; as does the verb in the previous line, immersed.  Here we see an actual process going on in front of us---we start when it is already in progress, and the poem takes it to the completion of the process.  This is an epic process, and yet, like the best poems of Dickey and Cunningham, this poem compresses all that into such a small space.  But compression, itself, can be a good thing.  After all, gravitational compression is what causes atomic fusion that provides us with the light and warmth of the sun.  And coalescence, to extend the metaphor, is what turns a small accretion of particles into an irridescent star over the process and progress of time.  And your poem reflect all of this in a few lines, a small space, and a huge amount of verbal power.  This poem is also, in a way, like a verbal clock; and we see numerous verbal cogs and gears turning quietly in the formation of lines to show us the process of love in the progress of time.  I am very, very impressed with this poem; and, admittedly, it says more as a poetic experience than any prose comment can measure after the fact.  It was a privilege to read this kind of poetry; and, specifically, this poem.