Thanks again, Allen! You are correcting my references. I don't think I confused him with the astronomer Herschel, but maybe I did when I wrote this. I'd have been a little manic (it's a few years old). Or maybe my source did, I can't say. Anyway, thanks. I'll leave the post as is to avoid confusion.

Cheers,
John

Let me add - for my criticism, everything gets looked up. It has to. For my poems, evidently not. I take my sources at face value, which is of course dangerous. I find a line I like and put it in a poem. At least, that's been my method. I like the Heschel quote a good deal.

Always happy to help a Cambridge person.

:-)

I guess I'm a lazy poet at the end of the day. Or I have been.

Cheers,
John

Allen, thanks for helping John there :)

John, thanks for the link to Hoss. Yes, that's a very big man. He died young, I read: "a post-operative pulmonary embolism following gall bladder surgery."

Thanks also for posting the poem that ends your Concerto for the Left Hand. Does the MS have anything to do with Ravel's piano concerto? I particularly like 'the song that makes the birds sing' and the humming of the particles.

Well, I found the trance track, and then I found another, which proved a better fit. But then I wrote a poem so F&F I can't post it here. What I have is a poem from upstream, this time with a great recording of the relevant Debussy prelude, here :)


Bruyères

Returning to Bruyères in 1910,
00some years before the Second World War rout,
he brought his drafting book and fine-nib pen
00in hopes to overcome his writing drought –
and this he did, upon vivacious streets
00all flanked by merry red-roofed shops and homes,
and by the castle, where astounding feats
00had been performed, as told in tunes and tomes;
his Muse sang sweetest, though, in town surrounds,
00in mountain woods with sunlight through the pines,
the calls of birds and deer his favourite sounds,
00enticing as the region's finest wines –
and Sylvie there, a girl he used to know,
he'd loved her 'til her death, so long ago.

- - -
I'll email you the new F&F poem, if you like :)

Hi Fliss,

Gravestones with dates close together always give me pause.

Yes, I have a Ravel poem in the MS., which I may dig out and put here. IIRC, he wrote the piece for Wittgenstein's brother, a pianist who had lost an arm in WW I. I think it's splendid. Glad you like the song that makes the birds sing - i was a bit manic at the time.

I like your Debussy poem a good deal. I've heard tell that Ravel was a nice guy and Debussy, not, but I like both their works and I've not read their bios.

Here's the Ravel to join the Debussy:


Concerto for the Left Hand


Out of the silence rise the strings – a deep
Wagnerian call, which the winds echo, building
to where the piano says its piece. You might
expect as much – but when the piano comes,
it has a jagged edge: each note and chord
speaks through the left hand only. What we lack
marks every step we take with it. The right
hand will not speak, though speech is of the essence.

The orchestra repeats its call. Again
the left hand speaks, and there is sadness in
each single note plucked from the void. The Lord,
says Valéry, made this world out of nothing –
but nothingness shows through. What has become
of the beautiful right hand here? It will not
caress the waiting keys. Not one brief note,
for all the left hand’s calling, though that hand
moves with consummate skill through each warm digit.
They said The Guard dies, but does not surrender,
and that’s exactly what the left hand does.



Almost forgot - here's a young orchestra performing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJTUUKAdZDU
 

Hi John,

Yes, do post your Ravel poem! I listened to the Concerto earlier today and enjoyed it very much indeed. Wikipedia has a page about it, here.

Thanks for liking that Debussy poem. I researched the lives of various French composers during my French A Level, for the oral exam, and I think Debussy featured there. That's interesting about his personality, and that of Ravel. I enjoyed reading your poem, particularly for 'jagged edge'. Have you written anything else to Ravel?

I mentioned a while ago that I wrote a few poems for Mother's Day earlier this year (27th March in the UK). Among them is an appreciation of my mother's visit while I was in hospital in February 2011. There are certainly musical elements here, as she was dressed in her Morris dancing clothes, complete with the bell-pads. Anyway, here you go...


Mother's way

Bay D of Hazleton Ward was at its worst
that Saturday. I'd slept about three hours
through all the usual screams and shouts for Nurse,
my stasis ulcer pangs, arthritis fires.

The maggots had been delayed aboard their truck;
I'd have to wait a few days for therapy.
But Mum would be here at 1pm, with lunch;
she came by bus each day with a box for me.

Come 1, a thud-and-jangle started, soft
yet loudening. And then, delightful sight!
A bluegreen tattercoat, a stick aloft,
a feathered hat, bell-pads. And all was right.

"What does she look like?" Nurses came to stare;
Mum laughed and threw her chair-leg in the air.

- - -
As you might imagine, Mother's visit brought a great deal of entertainment to Hazleton Ward :D

Hi Fliss,

Very nice! I especially like the chair leg, but the maggots also catch the eye. Leeches can also do good work.

It was Mother's Day in the US yesterday, by synchronicity, and my sister tells me that she prefers Mothering Sunday, in March, when women in service could go home and would bake a simmel cake for their mum.

I've not written anything else for Ravel but believe I once wrote a piece for La Mer which never made a MS.

Cheers,
John

Thanks, John! Hooray, I've just finished working for the day, at about 1am. I'm glad you have a couple of highlights here. Yes, leeches have their uses in healthcare too. The first poem I wrote once out of hospital described the maggot therapy. For a while I looked like I'd been in a shark attack, with a chunk of flesh missing from my left lower leg, but everything healed over time. I was lucky that the infection didn't reach the bone, otherwise they'd have amputated, oops, boops.

Yes, Mother's Day in the US. My mother does well in March, as it's her birthday as well as her special day, cue lots of celebrations. That's a lovely tradition for Mothering Sunday.

I'd like to see the La Mer-inspired poem; I assume you mean Debussy's piece? Ravel composed Ma mère l'oye, I expect you know, which is very touching. It's the final thing on my CD of his piano music.

Writing to Ravel remains on my List; for now, here's one I wrote almost a year ago, which you might recognise. It started in Non-Met, but I couldn't resist rhythm-ming it up at the end. I think that's because writing the poem cheered me up a bit, or something. One for the Lyrics file :)


After her fall

The magnolia stood on the sprawling front lawn
blooming purple and pink in the Spring,
an exuberant fanfare as fresh as the dawn;
she would gaze at the petals and sing.

But this Spring all the brassiness pounds in her head
and she wishes for something to soothe:
not the daffodil yells nor the tulips, too red,
nor the grass, so impossibly smooth.

In the shadow of hedge, in a modest array,
she finds players in delicate hue
and they nod as they chime, with the softest of sway,
a serene little movement in blue.

(^v^) <-- bluebird

Ouf! I am very glad your left leg no longer has a chunk out of it. The body is a tremendous homeostatic mechanism. I'd have to hunt hard to find that Debussy piece, and I don't think it would repay the effort. i shall likely write another, I do enjoy that piece and had a magical evening once listening to it on a lawn in I think Hampstead. Likely Hampstead Heath. As the sun set.

I like your new poem and can't help but hear it to the tune of "The Criminal Cried": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Iwf0YvFA0

Cheers,
John

OK, here's La Mer:


Summer Evening Concerts


That summer evening concert in the warm
cathedral cloisters, where the stone piled high.
The sun moved through the heavens, till behind
the stone, it put us in the shade, as all
the wind and strings played on into the night.

And then, the stars came out. The concert ended.
We rose up from the summer grass and shook
the spell from our resistant brains. The mute
appeal was at an end, the intricate
succession of the melody, the art

of those we knew and loved. That other time
lain on the heath to hear La Mer, the cars
lined up beside the grass, the blankets out
and people picnicking. The ebb and flow
Debussy offered, played in counterpoint

against the sun that drifted from its throne
in blue sky to the skyline, as the night
broke over Hampstead and the Moon and stars
all went about their business overhead.
Those British evenings. I can see them yet.

Ouf indeed, John. Thanks for your kind words. Yes, do write another Debussy piece, at your convenience. That does sound like a magical evening :)

Thanks for liking that poem. I'm not familiar with much of Gilbert & Sullivan, but your 'Summer Evening Concerts' reminds me of various outdoor performances I've enjoyed over the years, one in particular, which will pop up in the relationship MS. An interesting evening :D

As we're on Debussy, here's another you might recall, after 'La cathédrale engloutie'. I was going to write something new today, but work was hectic as usual and someone in the office has received another coommission for poetry puzzles. We're grateful for the extra earnings!


Ys Bay Cathedral

Ys Bay is hard to access from the north
as hefty headlands guard its pebbly beach,
but turn a boat to east and voyage forth
and Breton's coast is easier to reach;
the waters mirror colours of the sky
and movements too, as cloudscapes drift and dance
while Sun and Moon both travel on their ways
and gulls and terns and petrels wheel and fly
above the sea as though in turning trance,
a submerged city gleaming in their gaze.

Come mornings when the waters shimmer clear
an old cathedral rises through the waves,
astonishing to witness, far and near,
for birds on high to lizards in their caves;
as spires, towers, roof, and walls ascend
a dozen bells begin a joyful chime,
a thousand voices rise in cheerful throng
to organ thunderings, and then-– an end.
The building sinks to seabed... sand... slime...
and all that's left is sky, with seabird song.

- - -
Forthcoming :)

A very mysterious poem! I think you've captured the Breton coast nicely. Is that a Debussy piece I don't know? And I wonder if you have spires in two syllables.
I've not dug out my old Debussy poem - the last one was what I wrote yesterday thinking about it. Also, Gilbert and Sullivan are great.
Here meanwhile is a somewhat jagged piece that opens my Concerto for the Left Hand MS., with accompanying plainchant:


Plainchant


Tonight, the Moon is full, and Easter now
is a bare month away. The land is hard
as yet beneath the foot, and winter’s hold
on Indiana has not loosened up.

The day has yet to redden in the East.
Above these voices stand the watching skies
in their array, the planets on the move.
The words wash through my soul as if it were

some yet untraveled country, where the mode
does not conform to holiness. My heart
and mind dance in this Latin – my eyes close.
The round of year and hour resolves itself

into a scheme of measure, key, and octave.
And dawn is coming now. The monks have sung
their offices. Another day is come.
Have I been changed in hearing, much the way

a foot can change a threshold in the slow
drift of the centuries? And will the heart
in its career find access for this art
designed for Heaven on the Earth below?

 
And the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi5CZ3lTXP8

Coming back to Bessie Smith, here she is singing "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer," that classic number: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbQEapPrjGM

I prefer her voice to Ma Rainey's but both are great, and the recent film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, starring the magnificent Viola Davis, is well worth the watching.

Cheers,
John

Getting back to poems, here's one on a song I've loved for some time, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash's "Jackson," written by Jerry Lieber and Billy Ed Wheeler. I've finally written a poem for it. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NJC18Oi04

And here's the poem:


Jackson


We got married in a fever –
June Carter Cash and Johnny step on up
to a hot mic, with his guitar in tow,
to sing of Jackson. Johnny’s got a thing
or two he plans to do there. And then, June
lays into him like pork and beans. He says
look out, and steps off camera to let
June call him a big-talkin’ man, her voice
like a train whistle as she flicks her skirt.

Johnny’s in black. And when he says the town
is gonna stoop and bow, June laughs and says
they’ll lead him round town like a scalded hound –
she flounces, does a little step. And Johnny
moves up behind her to the mic, to hit
close harmony with her about the fever
they married in, and how the fire’s gone out.
They’re trading blows, you think – and then you catch
how gentle Johnny is – you see the smile

they share at every look they trade, the tight
harmony vocals, and you call to mind
how much he loved her, how she handled him.
We know the story. How the Man in Black
got into trouble. Jackson, Mississippi
may not be the big city, but there are
folks who have had this argument, and June
and Johnny sing for them: the man and wife
who married in a fever that’s gone out.

Hi John,

Thanks for enjoying that poem. I'm a bit tired tonight and I think I have a temperature, but I'll pop back as soon as I can to take a look at your latest postings :)

Best wishes,
Fliss

I hope you feel better soon, Fliss. Here's hoping you get a good night's rest.

Here now are the Reverend Julius Cheeks and The Sensational Nightingales singing "Burying Ground." The reverend was a big influence on the young Wilson Pickett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkxO9gBsp1E

And here's a little poem about it:


Burying Ground


I wonder can you hear – the Reverend
cries out – the church bells tolling? At his lead,
the Nightingales call. What has caught this man
like some bird in its toils? The song unspools
its slow freight of mortality, as up
above the grave – above the gospel chorus –
he soars in hope and grief. We listeners,
what do we hear? Can this man’s beating heart
beat in our breast? Can truth descend in fire
to wake our soul from slumber in the end?

A wet day. And they’re putting out the lawn
across the way, in green squares. They have turf
they’re laying down like carpet. From above,
no drop of rain is falling, but all night
it must have rained, since every leaf is wet
among our zinnias. And still the turf
drops onto the bare soil. On my drive home,
I listened to the Reverend Julius Cheeks
take the lead vocal as his gospel chorus
exploded into harmony. They filled
my ear with pattern and intent; there was
such meaning, meaning almost vanished, as
they told their tale of the new burying ground.


 

Here is a contender for the saddest music ever recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3J2e-L62bY

Friedrich Rueckert wrote the Kindertotenlieder in the 1820s, after losing I think two children to yellow fever. A couple of generations later, around 1904, Mahler decided to set them to music. His wife said, "What are you doing? I'm pregnant." Mahler continued, and they had a daughter. Who died aged four, of yellow fever.

This is Kathleen Ferrier singing, in perfect German, 1947, in a London still flattened by the Blitz.

And here's a poem about it:


Passage through to Daylight


The Kindertotenlieder have begun –
and my heart breaks, to hear the news they tell.
The days we have to live, when once our child
is taken from us. Kathleen Ferrier –

who died young – sings contralto as the wind
and strings speak out. There is no passage through
to daylight but the one she takes; it all
is full of grief. The sun goes up so bright,
she sings, as if no sorrow had occurred.

Now this is where the tears well up. They are
the oboes playing. Can we bear it? Mahler
set words to music and his pregnant wife
was troubled at his subject. And their child
lived to the age of four and then she died.

When your mommy, Rückert wrote, comes in,
and I look up, she looks for you, my little
daughter. This is perfect German, crisp
and consonantal. Stopped-out light of joy,
sings Ferrier: erloschner Freudenschein.

There is a sort of ending, one where hope
is heard again. And it is very fine –
but this child won’t be coming back, to greet
the mother’s eye, the father’s heart. As Lear
says: Never never never never.

 

Hi John,

Thanks for your latest contributions. I'm sort of drifting in and out of consciousness at the moment, but Allen's piece on Met put me in mind of my one poem in dactylic hexameter, so I'll just copy-and-paste that from the Word doc. It's part of the Scilly series, so it's silly. There's a little preamble, which I'll email :)


Troytown

'St Agnes Isle has a southern position as shown on the modern maps;
to her west side flows a channel, 'tis one of the narrowest smallest gaps
carved between island and rocks, here the Western Rocks, site of a thousand-wreck –
not least the SS Thames, as we heard tell while we sat on Old Chuck Steel's deck.

'Come 1680, the General Lighthouse Authority surveyed coasts
all around England to re-draw the sea charts and recommend lighting posts;
they gained permission to build and maintain on St Agnes one shipping aid –
later that year saw the plans approved, labourers hired, and foundations laid.

'St Agnes Lighthouse stood one-hundred-thirty-eight footfalls above the sea,
flashing her twenty-one eyes for ships' captains and crews most reliably,
fired by fierce coals burning brightly beneath her stout head with its wind vane hat –
boats, steamships, frigates steered far from the rocks to the relative sailing flat.

'Pleased with her triumphs, a young lad of Agnes decided to build a maze
made of grey pebbles and lain on the grass where the island sheep liked to graze;
maybe this lad had read Homer at school so he knew of the ancient Troy,
far north-west city whose walls have inspired many builders and brought them joy.

'Troy's walls were famous for guarding the city from raiders and foreign rule,
labyrinthine were they, placed to defend hilltop citadel, finest jewel;
one day, 1180 BCE, a big horse found a trick-way in,
birthed forty enemy soldiers at night, all the while wearing ghastly grin.

'Nevertheless the walls' great reputation stands tall through the land of time,
raising the maze of St Agnes and elsewhere, where crops seed and church bells chime;
this muse suggests, they are homage to forms of protection on Planet Earth,
conjuring safety for everyone through their stout stones and their goodly girth.'

��

Adventures in scansion! Your narrative proceeds, I think, Fliss, with your usual brio, and your poem is full of information. I do think it's very tough to make hexameter work in English, so you are a braver soul than I am! Well done for kicking the tires a bit and taking it out for a spin!
Also, I've always liked the word preamble.

Here's a poem inspired by an old Scottish folk song, written I'm sorry to say in my usual IP. Mondegreen, for those who've not heard it and according to my sister Maggie, is a folk term meaning basically something heard in error: for "laid him on the green," people heard "Lady Mondegreen." Here's the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoFT3L4KdAM

And here's the poem:


Mondegreen


Some things are gone and won’t be coming back.
Behind us, you can see a golden glow –
as if that world of options we once knew
were lit by dawn or sunset. This is how
the Earl of Moray looks. The tune plays out;
the heart constricts. And who can say how much
our might-have-beens could shunt this train of being,
in its dull round, into the sort of place
where Moray micht hae been the king? What dream

will cloud our waking eyes? What deed undone?
What dawn consigned to memory? The days
slip through our hands like water. Could the earl
come sounding in to where his lady sits
at her high seat? Could yesterday be calling
at our front door, as auld acquaintance might?
This waiting will not make it so. And when
dawn breaks, the round begins again. The light
of yesterday blinks out. The earl is dead.


 

To Fliss,
It’s enormously late in N.Y.C., to my bed now I must flee.
I’m sorry I can’t scan everything here, apologies due from me.
But this I know, I know and I haven’t forgot:
The ends of the lines are where the bells ring, or don’t.

A very very very quick read of the hexameter gives me satisfaction with these line ends:

Steel’s deck
vane hat
them joy
bells chime

Best,

Lou Reed and John Cale put out a fine tribute album to Andy Warhol at his death, Songs for Drella. Here's the album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKwo3QFWp4c


And here's a poem on it:


The Style It Takes

At the end of a long day
I find myself

immersed in Songs for Drella,
where Lou Reed and John Cale

tell Andy Warhol’s story. He has got
the style it takes, sings John Cale

in his flat voice, and every muscle
in my back, neck and shoulders

begins to ease. This is
an elegy, where grief

and anger meet, though art burns through
those passions like a flame.

I fired him on the spot, Lou sings, and Andy Warhol
calls him a rat. It’s just

work, this song says, and the guitar
does that. Each note abrades the soul, the way

an emery board
abrades the foot. It wasn’t me,

Lou sings; life in its vivid
red and orange fills my listening mind.

The simplest
words eat my heart, the way a bird

tore at Prometheus, while the music –
ah, the music! –

says life is beautiful,
and worth the living.

:)

John

Lol, yes, just a little adventure. I wrote this a few years ago. I thought heroic metre might be suitable for the subject, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Thanks for brio and there's certainly a lot of information. I posted the Scilly series on a love-in sort of site originally. Unfortunately it became a hate-in site once I'd been published a few times, so I had to leave 😂

Thanks for your poems, very much enjoyed. There's no need to apologise for IP; often it just fits 👍

- - -
Allen

I hope you slept well, Allen, and thanks for looking over the poem. I know it's a bit rubbish, really. If I were to have another go, I'd definitely do more research first and have a few practices before posting on Met. I'd also use my voice rather than one of my characters, lol. Still, I'm glad a few line ends brought you satisfaction :)


Best wishes,
Fliss

Hate-ins were not in the 60s plan! I am sorry to hear that news. OTOH, I'm glad brio has appeal, and the trip to the Silly Isles sounds memorable, if rather scilly.

I've decided to name drop a tad and post this poem about AC/DC. Here's the song, which I think is tremendous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etAIpkdhU9Q

And here's the poem:


We All Must Perish


A bell is tolling. My distracted ear
comes into focus. This is not the sound
an ambulance or fire truck makes; it’s not
the happy peal of wedding bells. It speaks
of how we all must perish. And across
its slow tones, a guitar in counterpoint
comes out of nowhere. What on Earth could this
strange fusion of the sacred and profane
portend for us? The two in dialogue
are joined by a high wail: I’m rolling thunder,
I’m pouring rain, it cries as if possessed.

For this is heavy metal. Angus Young
is in school uniform. I’m going to take
you, says the song, to Hell. Now what is holy
is not good by necessity, and Hell
lies on that axis. The eye lifts, the Lord
is heard in that catastrophe. This is
a struggle we are pawns in, and it plays
from other worlds into our own. The bell
is tolling still, a single note. The band
calls out the chorus. There is no escape.
 

Here now is the great Hank Williams.

First a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tPcfJZnXu4

And then, a poem:


Lonesome


Hank Williams is going to spend the next three minutes
telling me to mind my own business.
It’s 4 a.m., which may be a good time
to listen to his lonesome twang. I am
not minding my own business after all,
but then he’s the one who keeps talking about his life.

Just one of Hank Williams’s 40 Greatest Hits
clocks in at over three minutes, by one second –
that’s all the time he needs to make his point,
and he does so again and again. So now
he wants me to know he doesn’t like my way
of living. And we do lead different lives –

his son for instance calls another man daddy,
he tells me, and his prison time will have
something to do with that. He’s cut these words
into the living rock; the orchestration,
the voice, the rhetoric, are not the most complex,
thank goodness. Sometimes water is what we want.

Morning John (1am-ish here),

Hate-ins are inevitable, I've decided. It was a shame because I'd had a very pleasant time on that site for almost a decade. But once people become set in their shady ways, there's no point persevering.

I know quite a lot of musical terms, I've just realised. That trip was amazing; I had so much fun revisiting the places I'd visited and learning new things. I think some of the poems are still in Freshtival here.

Thanks for your latest contributions to this thread. I'm very tired at the moment (I just performed a pre-sleep kick), but I'll be back tomorrow to take a proper look. In the meantime, please enjoy this terrible rendering of Mussorgsky's 'Bydło' (music here). I do intend to rewrite it at some stage, but here we are in Amusements, lol.


Bydło

Sheets of rain sweep through the fields
...cattle stand and shiver
track verge trembles, shakes then yields
...road becomes a river.

Farmer must prepare his cart
...take his stock to market
hitch two oxen, shout to start
..."Come, Borys and Czarit!"

So the big beasts drop horned heads
...set their great limbs trundling
past the farmyard barns and sheds
...bearing timber bundling.

See the high cart wheels race round
...hurling mud on all sides!
hear the oxen's huge hoofs pound
...through the screeching squall tides!

Closer closer they approach
...whirring, rattling, creaking!
north wind forcing their encroach
...on the bank, shrill shrieking!

Smell Borys' and Czarit's sweat
...streaming down their tough flanks!
mingling with the earthen wet
...rushing from the bluff banks!

"Whoa there!" Farmer strokes his whip
...to avoid a tall oak
Borys shifts a hefty hip
...rights the flailing haul yoke.

Then the cart turns into town
...and the rainstorm passes
on the farm the sun shines down
...cattle chomp moist grasses.

- - -
I particularly like 'shrill shrieking', I think :D

Hi Fliss,

I don't know - I like it, especially the two oxen, and the chomping at the end.

Here somewhat randomly is Schubert, in musical form (and with my favorite baritone): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Rry-ahcHM . My favorite song in the cycle may be Der Lindenbaum, though it's hard to argue with the closing number.

And now featuring in a poem:


Separating Schubert from Interstellar Space


Separate knowledge from noise, they say, and that
seems like a worthwhile project. I for instance
know it is 9 a.m. The sun is up,
here where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf
and flowers bloom in late September light.

There’s knowledge to be had in my aunt’s house,
whose shelves are lined with her books, and my father’s,
and mine; where the TV shares information
and we all live our lives. There is an art
to the day’s round on this blue planet where

some seek truth, others happiness, and both
slip through the hand like water. I can hear
the notes of Schubert’s Winterreise as
the clock ticks, though the stereo’s not on.

The music’s like a still pool. And beyond
this bedroom lies a border town, a land mass,
a spinning globe, a solar system, and
black interstellar space that starlight fills.

 

Hi John,

Well, thanks very much for the appreciation! There are elements I like within the poem; I'm just wondering whether I could make it more dramatic. Chomping is always good, though :)

Random Schubert is good too. As you know, I've just woken from an hour's sleep and I really ought to go to bed in earnest soon, lol. But my first impressions of your poem are positive. It's interesting that we have different approaches to writing to music. Perhaps we could consider a collaboration at some stage. Do you remember when I channelled a ram-god on one of your ekphrastic pieces? That was fun :D

Best wishes,
Fliss

There should be more chomping! Though cattle do their fair share in all weathers, natch.

I do indeed remember your channeling my random gods, Fliss! Did you not also channel my poor winged bulls who never got to step off their plinth in the Louvre? It's been a couple of millennia.

I'd be happy to collaborate. Music I think lends itself to all sorts of approaches, including the chomping one, and all have merit. "All have won and all must have prizes," says the Dodo.

Cheers,
John

It's time to call a halt. This thread has been remarked upon, but not in a positive way, I'm afraid.

Drills & Amusements is not the place for mutual admiration communications between the same two people posting their poems on an almost daily basis, which is what the thread has become, so I am closing it.

I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but our "One poem per week" rule on the other poetry boards is there to prevent Eratosphere becoming a vanity site. We can't have D & A being used as a way of avoiding that rule.

Jayne