Thread: Existence
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Unread 02-16-2025, 10:29 AM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Halcott, New York
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Well, I wish I could be as enthusiastic as some others about this, Jim, but to me it seems unremarkable. It is dressed up minimally, as a bit of gnomic wisdom, but your admission that it was written quickly seems too true. The very short koan-like poems that return to haunt me are most often pieces that have been meditated on at great length, and then pared down to their essentially mysterious core. The title, which I agree is "pompous", and the reliance on the Shakespeare echo at the close, make me feel as if this is something quite ordinary merely dressed up in borrowed profundity. You seem to have put the cart before the horse, but it's the horse that does the work. Yeah, thoughts wander, we all know that--. But there's nothing here to make my own thoughts do anything other than that. I've hesitated to add my sour two cents here as I have not been very active lately and risk a rep as a grumpy spoiler. And I have tried to like the poem, yet in the end its spareness seems unearned to me.

Nemo
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