[Susan McLean]

This poem is the one that had the most powerful effect on me the first time I read it. I love that it starts with an ordinary routine and shows how quickly the deepest feelings can break in on it. The moment in which the joy at recognition of the loved accent turns to grief on realizing that it is a stranger's voice and the real loved one is dead has a huge impact. I immediately assented to the idea that silence would be important to the poet ("Only in silence, the word," as Ursula Le Guin writes), so the image of the door closing gently perfectly captures both the relationship and the moment of hearing about the death. The stone house in the fog was a very evocative image for me, which is doing double duty because it is clearly also a statement of fact. Wow.

Susan

[Michael Cantor]

Each time I read this I like it more. My favorite so far. Graceful, evocative, unusual.

[Rose Kelleher]

This sonnet needs revising. I don't know why, or what kind of revisions are needed, but even though I can't be at all helpful, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something deflating.

Just kidding. I think it's excellent.

[John Beaton]

On seeing the very positive comments on this, I took another look at it. I do like the effective handling of the silence near the end.

My first reaction was tainted by having seen the device used before, by Linda Pastan (found here http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=30148 and discussed here http://www.pd.org/Perforations/perf29/mk1.pdf with one subheading called "The Ghost In The Answering Machine"), and I think in a poem posted here a while back related to Anthony Hecht. However, if we can't appreciate poems on subjects that have already been written about, we wouldn't enjoy any new poems.

John

[Bruce McBirney]

This is another one I like more with each reading. I loved the octet right off the bat. I initially stumbled a bit metrically in the sestet (on the use of "hold me" and "told me" as feminine rhymes in lines 10 and 12), but didn't have that problem the second time through.

After several readings I gather, like Janice, that the narrator severed the relationship. The sestet remains somewhat mysterious and elusive to me. (I think intentionally, and effectively, so.) But I'm thinking N's time "alone" at that old stone house in the fog, so haunting now (lines 9-11), occurred after the break-up, and that N wanted to initiate a reconciliation but said nothing. If that's so, then there's extra sting to N's recollection of the lover's comment that N always closed doors quietly when leaving (lines 11-12). It refers not just to the lover's original meaning, but also to N's failure to reach out after sending him away--something that can't be remedied now. My take, anyway.

A lovely, moving poem, and one of my favorites here.

[Alex Pepple]

Originally Posted by John Beaton

On seeing the very positive comments on this, I took another look at it. I do like the effective handling of the silence near the end.

My first reaction was tainted by having seen the device used before, by Linda Pastan (found here http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=30148 and discussed here http://www.pd.org/Perforations/perf29/mk1.pdf with one subheading called "The Ghost In The Answering Machine"), and I think in a poem posted here a while back related to Anthony Hecht. However, if we can't appreciate poems on subjects that have already been written about, we wouldn't enjoy any new poems.

John

I also had that sense of déjà vu and question of true originality, but couldn't quite place it until I saw your link and remembered. I believe I've also seen another sonnet on a similar note, unless it's this same one.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Roger Slater]

This may be my favorite so far, as well, though I thought the opening was a tad weak, both because it went on a bit too long, and because it seems to be a bit out of date (that sort of barrage of junk phone calls, all leaving messages, is more or less a thing of the past with the advent of do-not-call lists). Anyway, the list risked boredom, all to set up the "surprise" voice and news. I'd have preferred a different list of mundane messages to set up the surprising news, perhaps a wrong number and a hang-up. But all in all, much enjoyed and admired.

[Petra Norr]

I agree with some of the comments on the octave. I understand the reason for the mundane content, but it’s a tad too mundane. The sestet, on the other hand, is excellent. It’s very arresting, evocative, and well written.
I admire this sonnet very much, and it would be unfair to say I have a problem with it. In fact, it’s not really a problem I have but more a subjective reaction. This sonnet namely feels a bit “private”. I don’t think it’s due to the dedication, since it’s not the only sonnet here that has one. Instead, it might be due to these lines:
“You’ve such respect for silence—” you once told me,
“—you leave the room, and gently close the door.”
Those lines are somewhat enigmatic but nevertheless quite good, and I don’t think they should be changed. But I do think they’re the reason I find myself more on the periphery of this sonnet than inside it. It’s like looking at the sonnet through glass; I admire the scene I see, but it feels too personal for me to be allowed into it.

[A. E. Stallings]

I like the sestet very much--the fog, and hold me/ told me. The octave, though, seems too deliberately a "set-up" for the sestet to foil--it feels like it is marking time a bit to me, and the device, as has been pointed out, has been used before (though admittedly cliches come about because they actually happen, I suppose, to more than one person...) I would like the octave to be doing more work, to reward rereading--to come up to par with the close. But a solid sonnet nonetheless.

[Tim Murphy]

Good memory. I did write a poem about Helen Hecht having Tony's voice on the recorder five years later. I think it might have started as a sonnet, but we cut it to eight lines. That in no way prejudices me for or against this poem.