Thank you for your comment. : Thank you for your comment. Your Poems are definitely a lighhouse at PostPoems. But, whereas the great Alexandrian lighthouse was finally toppled, and (as I understand) some of the rubble is now below water. your Poems, your literary achievement, and the significance of your words will NEVER be toppled. Like ships in the Alexandrian harbor, lesser poets come and go; but your Poetry will continue to tower over the landscape and will not be assailed by the vagaries of time and circumstances.
Thank you for your gracious: Thank you for your gracious reply. and your courteous tolerance of my verbose recollections.
I think you can count on a very useful effect that these poems can deliver to their readers. You have already helped me, a grumpy old coot, to understand certain aspects of my early years, and others will be, and are being. helped as well.
Your comments on my work are: Your comments on my work are poetry itself, so this metaphorical stunner goes far beyond any expectation I could ever have.
Actually, this lustrously descriptive voyage to ancient Alexandria and the archetype of lighthouses could be an apt metaphor for numerous poetic achievements (A few poets on this site, you included, have constructed literary monuments that left me reeling on occasion.)
Very common in your poems, are elements of humor, effortless likability and whimsy that take them to the next level of enjoyment. Your own edifice of wit could be constructed from your ability to see lighthearted beauty in an endless variety of subjects combined with word-forging of the first order. I also found it significant that you chose iambic pentameter to underscore the metaphor's classicism and your overall intent.
I'm insanely gratified and deeply humbled by your gleaming, impeccable tower of inspiration.
As for typos, trust me, I'm the queen of flubs. You just don't see them because proofreading was a finely honed skill that a nun instilled (to use a soft word) in me in the first grade.
Endless gratitude and every blessing.
What a gorgeous and clever: What a gorgeous and clever metaphor! As for the tiny hand glitches we all have: not a problem! If you could see all the typos I made that never saw the light of day, you wouldn't give your very insignificant errors a second thought.
For your encouragement, I could never thank you enough in this one, short life.
I like to think of the little: I like to think of the little traumas like splinters that don't want to be sprung loose. Sometimes, when I have a splinter I'd almost rather cut off the entire finger to make that nagging pain go away. At least if I were an amputee the pain wouldn't be brushed aside as insignificant. Thank you for sharing some of your own personal hardships, I hope this series makes more people more comfortable being vulnerable. If my journey of healing can be of some use to others it makes all the pain worth it.
To the child who experiences: To the child who experiences some sort of trauma, it is neither trivial, nor common to many, nor any of the other labels that we adults put on it. To the child whose life experience is in no way equal to an adults', each trauma is as new as if it happened for the very first time to the very first person. The child has not analogue with which to measure or define the trauma; and even a second or third trauma, or whatever number it is, seems like a first because it is so specific to that child's circumstances. When, at a family reunion, I, a nine year old, was rejected by my sixteen year old cousin (whom I dearly loved) from playing badminton with her, I wept hot tears---not because I cared that much for the gane, but because of her somewhat abrupt rejection of me (previously, she had been very kind and gracious to me). When I was almost eleven, and found out, early one weekend morning, that the great actor, Boris Karloff, had died in a London hospital, I wept profusely. I even wept at school, and my classmates in fifth grade made a mockery of that. I knew in my head that people died all the time; but, in my heart, Karloff's death affected me as if it were the first ever death.
Then, from sixth through tenth grade, the bullying I experienced---sometimes with very minor physical assault---was not unique in our school; several people like me, including one of my closest friends, were bullied because of how we looked, what we were called (nerds, dweebs, faggotts), and even because our grades were higher than those of the bullies who tormented us. Even then, although I knew far better that it happened all the time, and everywhere, it still seemed that I faced it entirely alone. My parents either dismissed the concern, or believed I brought it upon myself; the school administrators were entirely indifferent to it.
You obviously understand what Little Evan had to endure. Too many people do not; to many dismiss it as imaginary, or as a made-up complain to deflect attention from something else. Today, while writing this, I began to wonder if the reason I studied to many poets of the past, and almost no contemporary poets, was because I feared to lose someone to whose living work and accomplishment I might become attached. Christian Faith would have assisted with this, but that did not come to me in the soul-sustaining way until 1994, when I was already thirty-five.
I applaud this series that you have been building and expanding, and I am certain---very, very certain---that it will help many as much as it has helped me.
Volcano Vibrate: Made my own observations in reading this with a highly prying interest. So many dimensions burst into form, like candelabra storm. or ethereal eruptions. Bubble the blood. heart who throbs out-a-control in a vague dreamstate shared via glyphs interlinked
Very nice poem structure and theme design : That's a lot material things. Hopefully they never quite "all..are the same". It's hard enough, as it is ; )
I must aopologize for the: I must aopologize for the several uncorrected typos. I spelled "find" as "fine," and I left the "c" out of "connections." I am so sorry for this. During this past week, in which my medical condition has been more abnormal than usual, I have found that my keyboarding has been far less accurate than I would prefer. Plus, I have never been a good proofreader. But I hope that those negative qualities do not poorly reflect upon my genuine admiration for your Poems, your verbal skill, and the ptogounf spirituality at thrives within your words and phrases. The metaphor that came to my mind as I keyboarded these words is a tourist walking toward one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The tourist happens to stumble; and while the mis-step may seem laughable, or even pathetic, the tourist's awe in the presence of the Wonder is in no way diminished by the stumble.