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Unread 04-28-2012, 09:12 AM
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Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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Location: Saint Paul, MN
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This is appealing and immediate, and right there it's got a big advantage over the others so far. Nobody needs a second read to understand the scenario of head-over-heels love! And very, very few readers will take issue with any part of the argument, as happens too easily with poems 1 and 4.

Besides the relative strengths, the poem has some absolute ones. There's the stream-of-consciousness feel that Shaun comments on, conveyed by features like abrupt line breaks after prepositions and between an adjective and its noun. That effect is exactly right for the poem's emotional content, and it conveys the sense of tumbling forward into experience. The poem also manages to turn some standard rhyme pairs into great stuff by making them vehicles for the discovery of great images: singers kissing a song out of our mouths in bed and the ocean like the planet breathing. A great example of the way rhyme leads us to the unexpected, if we let it.

My reasons for guessing the author's identity have a little too much to do with people's recent life stories, so maybe I won't stress them. But if this isn't who I think it is, I will eat a hat made of Oregon beach seaweed.
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