[Aaron Poochigian]

Garden Sonnet

Summer's end, its stillness, sees me sip
on wine and sink into that risky chair.
Some afternoons I lose myself and slip
my moorings; all that's me takes to the air
and leaves me newer eyes. The garden's filled
with floating seeds: an alien invasion,
curious, adrift and lost, but thrilled
by their mistake, their scale miscalculation.
Parachutists gather on my shirt,
land in my drink, so light the liquid's skin
performs that sticky buoyant trick, alert
to any touch, and clings. Sounds begin:
the world is never still. I see one gleaming
sparrow's wing and look! The sky is teeming.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Pertaining to the sea (the verb “sink,” “moorings,” etc.) and air (“Parachutists”), the major metaphor-groups in this poem effectively destabilize the speaker as he/she sits tippling wine in a chair. The author is particularly good at finding adjectives (“risky,” “newer”) and adjective clusters (“sticky buoyant”) that, in their contexts, are remarkable. The rhymes are effortless throughout, and the closing couplet is epiphanic.

[Catherine Chandler]

Very pleasant and well-crafted, but it would take more than the final couplet to get me excited about this one.

[Ron]

A pleasant but unremarkable moment well-captured, I think. Nice to find things floating and not merely falling, though the parachuting image is relatively fresh, and the concluding image of winged sparrow(s) is a nice close. Salute.

[Roger Slater]

I think this is very well done until the final couplet, which for me isn't epiphanic at all but something of a let-down. We had all those interesting metaphors and fanciful observations about parachutists, aliens, miscalculations, with close observation of details like the meniscus of the wine, and then along comes the climactic couplet and all we are given is a bunch of non-descript sparrows which we are ordered by an exclamation point to find exciting.

Until the couplet there's not much I'd complain about, though the "moorings" metaphor may come off a bit less fresh than I'd like.

[David Danoff]

As gorgeous now as it was when it was workshopped.

[Julie Steiner]

Like others, I love the gentle, whimsical mood of this, until just before the end, which I think could be far more powerful.

[...]Sounds begin:
the world is never still. I see one gleaming
sparrow's wing and look! The sky is teeming.

Am I the only reader who initially thought "one" referred to a sound? And actually, I'd like to hear some sounds there, not more visual imagery. I'd like to hear the "risky chair" of L2 creak ominously at the end of the poem, yet still support the narrator's momentary peace in an ever-changing world.

[Susan McLean]

This is an interesting mood piece. There are a few disorienting moments when the perspective shifts, such as when I think the speaker is "curious" but it turns out that the airborne seeds are imagined as actual parachutists. I think the last three lines could be improved. It would help to hear more specifics about the sounds, since what we actually encounter next are sights. I think "The world is never still" could be omitted. But I like the transition from a focus on the earlier stillness to the teeming skies (presumably the speaker is hearing something connected to the plethora of birds around).

Susan

[Michael Cantor]

It's well done all the way through, and the opening six lines grabbed my attention - but then it sort of sent nicey-nice and sideways when I would have preferred more of a bang. Reading it through a few times, I think the problem is with lines seven and eight, which somehow seem to be struggling to say something and justify their existence, rather than join the flow of the poem. "scale miscalculation" jerks me out of the poem. The closing sestet is good - the poem is back on track, and ends quietly but well. It may not even be all of L7/L8 - possibly its just "scale miscalculation" that clangs, and has be be replaced.

[Mary McLean]

This is pleasant and evocative but doesn't really grab me. I found the phrase "all that's me takes to the air and leaves me newer eyes" a bit overblown, and it leaves me expecting more vividly original imagery than what follows.