I like it very much and have a few observations - no nits. There's an "M" progression from Michigan to Mystery to Memory. I believe you don't use "I" very often in poems, but prefer to make statements about how things work, or what they are, such as in the first two lines of S2 and the last two lines of S4. As always, your poems have much music: stone/struck/stranger, mind/binds, home/hem/comb, dive down/dregs, wrack/wrecks/cracks/rocks. I like how "moulded by time" reminds me of fungal mould. You use "down" twice: dive down and fall down, which seems to suggest actions of memory, which "sets," "binds," or "expands." If I were to use the word "didactic" about some lines in the poem, I would take it back since the suggestion of such is quickly followed by vivid images: hem of a dress, comb of the sea, bladderwrack. I think teaching is in your blood, and your poems search for answers like any student would, rather than preaching from a pulpit. As for the connection between an avocado stone and memory, I recently described certain of my memories as a tiny bitter rock deep inside me that needed to be dissolved.
|