[Matt Q]

Hi James,

I read this when it was first posted, and like David, thought doubling up the lines would be better. And seeing it done, I do think it is.

I'm a little confused by the premiss of the poem. At first I thought the N was reading letters from his (possibly former, possibly estranged, possibly dead) beloved, with the aim of reconnecting to them. Yet later in the poem, it seems like he's reading his own hand(writing), his own flourishes.

So, then I was thinking these were instead letters he had written to his beloved. In which case, I wondered, why does he still have them? Did he not send them, perhaps? I guess unsent letters are a possibility. Or did he get them back somehow, maybe he was given them in the break up? Maybe he now lives with his beloved (or they were living together before the beloved died, if the beloved did) and the beloved keeps/kept the letters in their shared closet? Incidentally, as someone who sometimes uses their hairbands as elastic bands, the use of one here doesn't clue me in as to who's kept the letters.

Whatever the case, I wonder why reading his own letters brings the beloved back more than reading the beloved's letter would? The beloved is at a remove in this case. But maybe that's part of the tiptoeing back, and he's not ready to read the beloved's. Or maybe he didn't keep the beloved's letters? So the N is trying to reconnect more with himself, with his previous feelings and that way "bring back" the beloved, bring back his connection to the love he once felt, or still feels, for the beloved?

Hmm, or given "lyric" and "notes" and the implication of a musical instrument, maybe they are songs, or poems, that he wrote about the beloved -- but then why fold them, which is more suggestive of letters that have been sent or at least placed in envelopes to be sent?

I guess that "you" could be his former self and not a beloved -- his former, "folded selves". In which case he's rereading to recapture himself -- the true and the false notes. But still, them being folded suggests letters more than a diary or notebook.

The close shows him trying to reconnect with what it was he'd written: what he meant, what he felt. But it's distant from him, he's not at the centre of it: he's picking at the edges (the corners). He considers finds elements that strike him as clear and true -- resonant, as per the title, and maybe also as genuine, authentic -- and those he considers false notes, that don't resonate, and are perhaps inauthentic. This could be his assessment of what he wrote back then -- that some was fake, inauthentic. But it could also be that everything he wrote back then was true to him back then, but given how he feels now, it feels false, it doesn't resonate anymore, because he's no longer in that space.

So, my best guess is that he wants to rekindle or remember his love for the beloved. He wants to "tiptoe" back, which suggests he wants to do this gently, without causing alarm, perhaps. He does this by reading love letters that he'd written long ago, since those were declarations of that love -- or the expressions it -- and might reconnect him to that love. He thinks this will remind him how he felt, but finds he can't (fully) connect to these. And with this, there's perhaps also an implication that his love back then wasn't as strong / clear / true as he remembers it. Even if that's correct, I still think I'd like to be just a little clearer on the scenario. Something small to push it one direction of the other. Maybe, if the hairband is intended to denote a woman, "her hairband" would be enough: would make it clear who'd kept the letters and that they'd had been sent/given rather than unsent and kept by the N (assuming, of course, he didn't keep her hairband and bind his unsent letters in them!).

With the caveat that everyone has their own approach to enjambments, there were a few that I felt could maybe be stronger. I thought "from" was quite a weak word to have a stanza break on in S1, and I couldn't see what it was meant to achieve. In S5/6 and I don't see advantage of the hard break on "my", separating "my" from "flourish" -- is there an intention to emphasise "my"? That aside, I wondered if you might do something to to avoid the "my"/"try" end-rhyme which gives you a rhyming couplet, which seems odd in a free verse poem. And in S7 I'm not seeing the benefit of breaking on "the". Breaking on "pluck" might be worth trying, to emphasise the connection with "clear note" and how this implies a stringed instrument. For balance, I do like the break on "careful" in S1, and how it works differently either side of the line-break. And I like the S4's stanza break on "hair-" a lot, and the double-read this gives.

best,

Matt