[Jim Moonan]

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It feels fragmented in both thought and form. The opening line is perfect iambic pentameter. The entire poem is maddeningly metrical but it feels lost inside the arrhythmia of the structure and never finds a form to live in. I’ve come to know you as being a poet who gives careful consideration to every aspect/nuance of your poems. Could it be that this needs more work? Is the poem itself poetic larva?

In my attempt to dissect/piece together the various touchstones of this poem — the heart, the grandest chamber of the heart, the throne, the woodworm, the unholy holes, the larva, the beetle — I looked at the word “larva” for clues. Its etymological origin is 17th century and “denotes a disembodied spirit or ghost”. It is also characterized by “immaturity” — a “yet to be” sense of becoming something. In this case the transformation is in the wake of entropy. It’s a confluence of imagery at work.

I don/t know what to think of the poem. The first line is beautiful but the rest never congeals. Is the poem itself going through a metamorphosis? I can’t help but think that maybe you intended that to be the effect.

L11&12: I did get an echo of Frost's opening line from "Mending Wall" (Something there is that doesn't love a wall)

Still, it feels like you haven’t fully expressed what is in your heart with this poem (pun). I tried for a while to make it be about love lost, but it doesn’t hold up.

I do sometimes think that we are in a constant larval state of being.


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