PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

This is powerful Stephen, very honest and easy to feel.  Excellent sir. 

I have been reading poetry for fifty years as of this past April.  I cannot remember reading a Poem that concentrates so much eloquently stated sorrow in so few lines.  There is no label to describe this poem (symbolist, realist, imagist . . . and on and on they go), because its most ancient definition is the one it is most entitled to:  POEM.  This is a Poem, and it is Poetry, in the sense understood most profoundly by the Ancients.  And this Poem resonates in the soul while, in my case, causing my old, decrepit body to ache a bit as well.  In my opinion, which is not authoritative at all but is offered with sincerity here, this is one of the FINEST poems in your collection.  And I will say with all candor, and I say it here for all to read, if I were teaching a course on Poetry---the real stuff, not the scholars' imitations---this would be a Poem I would want to include.  Although there are actions---hovering, huddling, whispering---the evocation of both stillness and silence is incredibly powerful.  And the Poem concludes with dying, not with the death of the loved one being mourned, but with the dying inside of a survivor.  

As a reader, I applaud thepoignancy of the emotion that you deploy through your excellent words.  As one poet to another, I congratulate you on a towering achievement.  Despite the sorrow this poem presenrts (and from which, I suspect, it emerges and proceeds), you should be very, very pleased with your accomplishment here.

Stephen, this may sound strange but I find the power of the sadness this piece invokes, heavily beautiful. So impressive...