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Unread 04-30-2012, 05:42 AM
Christopher ONeill Christopher ONeill is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Cardiff, Wales, UK
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I enjoy the mild incoherence, and the unwillingness to settle to any clear line of development of this poem. Both seem to me to capture an essential quality of finding oneself unexpectedly lone just when one has become accustomed to being together.

I also liked the semi-generic quality of much of the imagery early in the poem: love makes us discover how much we are the same as other people, usually at the same time as it is making us feel unique.

I labour over I walk down California : I'm not sure what 'down' means in relation to an entire state, and I'm also concerned that it sounds like it might be a very long walk.

That is a relatively minor niggle.

I have a great deal more trouble with the echo of George Herbert's The Collar in the closing line. I can't make the reference augment the poem in any way, nor can I get the Herbert out of my head when I read this.
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