[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Alessio, Max, and Alex—

Thank you, gentlemen, for your thoughtful and generous comments on my poem.

Alessio—The connection to Pentecost is more loosely emotional rather than strictly and accurately theological. I imagined the father as Christ, the N as a disciple, and the memory of the kite-flying as the Paraclete. The father knows he must depart and gives his son a comforting memory to strengthen his faith. The flame-colored kite above the heads of the father and son recalls the actual Pentecost experience, which properly happened ten days after Christ’s Ascension.

I decided to keep the ballad-like structure rather than make the poem a sonnet because I thought the narrative component and the deliberate simplicity and informality of the diction was more in line with the ballad form.

Max—I agree that S2L3-4 come perilously close to stating the obvious. I’ll give some thought to revising this weak spot.

The tense shift you noticed was simply an artifact of the rhyme: “diamond/climb and.” I agree that it’s better to have a slant rhyme than to butcher the sequence of tenses, so I made the necessary fix.

I also agree that there were just too many adjectives in S1L2, so I adjusted accordingly. I also gave them a bit more room to run around by changing “perch” to “expanse.” These were very helpful suggestions.

Alex—I fixed S3L3 to more precisely identify who was shouting. Good catch.

I like your suggestion to replace S2L3-4 (which are not pulling their weight) with an insight into the father’s reason for planning the kite-flying afternoon. I’ll work on that.

I appreciate your well-considered critiques, gentlemen, and will continue to polish the stone.

Glenn