PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Did I misunderstand: Did I misunderstand something?  I thought our conversations had been about Christian belief; but this poem suggests a kind of reincarnation.  Human beings are the pinnacle of God's creation; they are the only created beings said to be "made in His image."  How, then, would He allow you to "return' as something less than what you were when you began?  I guess I am not understanding the belief position from which you are writing.

This poem . . . this superb: This poem . . . this superb spiritual testimony cast into the form of a poem . . . will bear more spiritual fruit than you, or I, or anyone who reads it will ever be able to imagine.  This poem will bear blessings to its readers, and God will use it to accomplish much in His Timing.  With this poem, you join the greatest Poets of Christendom.

This, also, was rather: This, also, was rather difficult for me to read:  not because of any flaw in the verbal presentation, but for the poignancy of the situation, and for the emotional power of your description of it.   I am going to tell you something that I rarely share with anyone.  I think I have mentioned, before, that I have been reading poetry for almost half a century; this coming April will mark fifty years, a full fifty years, since that process began.  During that time I have read thousands of poems, have re-read hundreds over and over, and have admired dozens and dozens.  But only a very few poems have actually invaded me, conquered me, and carved out a territory for themselves within my soul.  I apologize if my metaphor seems crude or trite, but it is all I can think of right now to describe the process.  In the past before PostPoems, three great Poets invaded me:  T.S. Eliot in October 1976; Wallace Stevens in October 1978; and Vergil (starting in the spring of 1976, and intermittently thereafter).  On PostPoems, the poems of Patriciajj also gave me this same feeling---and, for the first time, I was seeing in real time what I had only experienced with the other three Poets by reading about in remembered or documented or researched time.  But watching Patriciajj post her poems was a vision of the actual living process---and I felt as thrilled as I had when, during my Senior year in high school, Poetry took hold of me with a grip that has never released me.  I have said all that, to say this:  now, I am experiencing the same thrill as I watch the development of this superlative series of meditations.  Although you cast your words in the form of prose in this series, it is still pure Poetry.  And you are showing us not only how it is done, but also what it can achieve. A French Poet whose pen name was Saint John Perse wrote a series of poems about natural phenomena as processes:  he wrote about winds, movements of the sea, birds, and even time itself.  (I am not nearly as familiar with his work as I should be.)  You are working in the same general area, but instead of giving us the processes that the impersonal forces of the world accomplish (and which so fascinated Saint John Perse, who was also a brilliant diplomat for France), you are showing us the processes of the soul by which Little Evan becomes Big Evan.  And you are presenting it as a Poetic process, which is a superlatively effective strategy. Like the Poetry of Eliot, Stevens, Vergil and Patriciajj, your words in this series have invaded me, and will continue to do so.  I do not open my soul often, or even willingly, to many; but to your words, I offer the key to the city, so to speak.

I don't believe that's: I don't believe that's correct, sir. Some of us are trying, though.

It's one of the hardest: It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. I don't think I've cried so much in years. Thank you for reading and for the encouragement to keep writing. 

Well done, soldier. You: Well done, soldier. You receive a citation of completing this parrticular mission.