PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Lady A . . . please forgive: Lady A . . . please forgive me for unintentonally making disparaging comments about one of your heros.  Especially during this particular week, and its spiritual significance, I feel very foolish.  My anger toward Krupskaya has been a kind of collateral damage created by the outrage, even a centruy later, at the murders of four adolescent girls, a prepubescent boy who was a hemopheliac, and his dog by a bunch of thugs.  I think those holy martyrs would have me put away my resentment toward even the murderous Bolsheviks---all of them.  After all, Christ commanded blanket forgiveness; He did not grant me, or any Christian, the privilege of conditional or truncated forgiveness.  So, just as I made remarks about Krupskaya openly at postpoems, without knowing that she was a hero of yours, so I will gladly (especially as Pascha draws just days nearer) and openly admit that I was wrong. while similtaneously asking your forgiveness for my self-righteousness (it is one of my major, and habitual, failings, as my friend Stephen Brewerton can attest.  The more of my postpoems neighbors who know of this failing, the sooner my faith will compel me to start on amending the flaw.    So, again, I ask for your forgiveness for offhand remarks that were hurtful and immature.  I shall do my best to ensure that it does not happen again.     Thank you for considering my request.       Starward

Thank you so very much.  I: Thank you so very much.  I had thought the title might be a little "pver the top," and if you agree, I can change it to something different; but for right now . . . . And your phrase, crucial series is a validation, that will continue to inspire the series well beyond what I had originally hoped.  For that, I am so very grateful.

Sending positive thoughts and: Sending positive thoughts and prayers for the Archbishop now. May healing light surround him, and you as well! Your compassion is an example of Christ's love in action. 

This is a very fine,: This is a very fine, powerful, poem. The subtlety of its rhyme scheme gives an aural support to the subtlety of the emotion. I say subtlety because, in reading it, I detect to emotions: the very specific rage that throbs through the lines like a dislocated joint; and then, the almost silen sorrow---the subtle emotion the poem has concealed almost to the end----of the final line. Most of the lines are fairly short, and this gives them a kind of tenseness that one would associate with a coiled spring about uncoil all of its power. The longer lines give a brief---very brief---relief from the building up of the rage (the tension in the spring as it is turned tighter and tighter), and the last two long lines (just above the final two lines) have the effect of slamming the brakes down hard (yes, I know I am mixing my metaphors), and the spring uncoils and snaps into the final line, which bears the sound of near silence (to borrow a phrase from Simon and Garfunkel) as the brevity of the final line deploys and brings conclusion to the poem.    And yet, as a reader, I most definitely have the eerie feeling that . . . although the poem has concluded, the situation the poem is describing in highly metaphorical language, has not concluded; and the inflictor of the damage, to which the speaker of the poem is responding, does not intend to conclude the infliction of damage.  Therefore, I . . . as a reader who deeply admires this Poet's work . . . will continue to hope for a sequel.

Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskya: . She lived 15 years longer than Vlad. Aristicrat with passion to help the poor of Russia. A particular hero of mine. Never read much exceot she went on long hikes with Lenin. May try to find her in translation. She was Lenin's transcriptionist. An autobio would have been fab. Wonder what records and correspondence Kremlin is sitting on?  . ~A~

I have been writing Tanka (as: I have been writing Tanka (as I can barely manage Haiku/Senryu) for more than a decade and I have several hundred here on postpoems:  in my opinion, you are showing tremendous respect for the poem.  I am in something of a minority because I do believe that part of the purpose of writing poetry of any kind is to do so with skill, and, in the Asian forms, that means lines of 5/7/5 in Haiku and Senryu, and 5/7/5/7/7 for Tanka and Kyoka.  There is an online magazine called Prune Juice which specialized in Senryu and Kyoka---and I have learned a lot from reading its contents (although the syllabic rules are now followed faithfully in its pages).  I have really come to admire your use of the form, and I applaud the accomplishment you have set forth on postpoems.  People, here as elsewhere, are a little too quick to criticize, and not quick enough to appreciate.  I would prefer to be a little superlative in my comments because my timespan is short, and I would rather spend it making compliments than criticisms.  (Besides, I usually have enough to confess to Father Gregory without adding internet squabbles to it.)  So I look forward to your next postings in this form, and I know you will continue showing us how.