[Martin Elster]

Fliss, your poem reflects the beauty of the saxophone melody, the mystery of the harmonies, and the suspense of the rising clarinet sequence. I enjoyed it.

Thanks for liking those poems of mine. “Lost Chords” is in a repeating form called a quatern. So perhaps “quarter” kind of mirrors that, since each stanza is a quarter of the whole. But it’s actually a music term, a quarter tone being one quarter of a whole tone or major second (i.e., half a semitone).

I’m also glad you liked the blues piece and “Celestial Euphony.” The book, by the way, has an assortment of poems on different topics, including several on music and astronomy, but also a lot of poems about nature and how we interact with the world around us.