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Unread 02-28-2024, 11:12 PM
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Alexandra Baez Alexandra Baez is offline
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Alexandria, VA, USA
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Jim, wow! You've really made a sea change in a positive direction. I think your instincts are pointing you in some really good directions now. I especially love the part starting "I felt myself being fossilized"--I think the poem's most effective language starts here--and I love the clever way you've incorporated your "notes," at the end in italics, into a part of the conscious experience related by the n. The two-part, big-small, interrelated-yet-distinct effect of the poem reminds me of the haibun form, with its prose poetry beginning and its haiku ending. From the outset, I'm also much more captivated by the shape of this version of the poem because with its increased width and length, it's much more dramatic. "Flash-Frozen" is also interesting to me because it suggests not only a physical act, but a mental one--freezing this moment in time mentally.

I think there are still some places where you could tune things up a bit--places where the language seems borrowed from other sources, like

Quote:
the panorama of sea and sky and land sculpted
by winds and tides and glacial flows,
I also wonder about the semicolons here:

Quote:
and place in lines;
like relics on a table;
like staccato notes:
I'd be inclined to write this more straightforwardly:

and place in lines
like relics on a table,
like staccato notes:

BUT it does appear that you've had a visit from a muse.
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