[Pedro Poitevin]

Something is very vague. In Frost's Mowing, the word "something" is connected clearly to the metaphor of whispering. The vagueness of the something is necessary and playful. In Frost's Mending Wall, the something that doesn't love that wall is, well, frost, and this playful and mysterious self-referentiality confers significance to the vague word. But here the poet doesn't seem to have as much justification—other than the strictly idiomatic one—for the use of the vague word, and that turns me off. I rather like the apples, the calendars, the vivid descriptions, the sound of time passing, even the infinitesimal hiccup with its small but perceptible hiccup in the rhythm of the poem.

[Roger Slater]

I think this would be better without the couplet, though it would no longer be a sonnet. Not only does the couplet tell us what the "something" is after the poem takes such pains to remain elusive while allowing the reader to reconstruct the feeling, but it also does so in a heavy-handed way. "I too will die" is hardly a revelation, and to close on that lament seems to short-change poor Peter, whoever he is, who is already dead but whose passing seems to make the speaker sad only as a reminder of her own eventual demise. I did like the first twelve lines, though.

[Mary Meriam]

I think using the word "something" in a poem is risky. Especially in a sonnet, it takes up a lot of space. And then to repeat it, you've used up too much valuable real estate. I don't know, this one feels too removed, too rhetorical, without enough urgency; in short, pedestrian.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I like it pretty well, but I agree with Mary. There's not enough here that's strking.

[Toni Seger]

I enjoyed this evocation of Frost. I heard lots of echos, some already mentioned, but mostly After Apple-Picking.

"There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall."

This poet opens with the thumping sound of falling apples from untended trees. Such a waste, food hitting the ground and growing bruised. The poem hints at waste over the passage of time. I liked it.

[Paddy Raghunathan]

Somehow the thumping of apples leading to a full calendar was lost on me.

Paddy

[Siham Karami]

This drew me in from the beginning and has a nice quality to it with the lilting lines. And of course, any poem with a birch tree in it already has my sympathy. Since there was slant rhyme before, I don't see that as a problem with the ending, whose last line I like, but the penultimate not so much. Maybe because it seems too expected or plain. If there was another less obvious or more image-related way to express that...

[Janice D. Soderling]

I think the ghost of Frost is whispering throughout the poem. A fine tribute, a fine new creation.

[Michael Cantor]

This is obviously well done, but it never grabbed me. Part of it is personal taste, part that the tone never changed, it never did anything but murmur and mutter. No highs or lows. nothing striking. And I would have preferred a stronger closing couplet, and - for this quite possibly-too-quiet poem - a perfect rhyme at the end. It needs a bit of Ta-da!

[Charlie Southerland]

I thought this started very well. The title is OK but doesn't jump off the page at me. The first 3 lines are really good and I can see what N is seeing and feeling there. L4,L5 is a little strained, maybe because of punctuation. N's description of how her/his friend/lover' hoarding piled high enough to block sunlight was nice.

Reminds me of the song' 'Is That All There Is' while she is sorting through the stacks, knowing nothing was important. I like this poem. Might make my top 5.