[Petra Norr]

No one/ can deviate from others in the row.

Perhaps it’s safer just to stay/ indoors than go off course again.

There’s a lot of community pressure in places like this – pressure to behave the same as everyone else and keep your home looking like everyone else’s. I think the lines above can do double duty. “No one” can refer to a bush in a row, and to sailors (as MaryAnn pointed out), but it also can allude to the residents themselves. Anyone with different values and ideas is going to have problems here. As I see it, the narrator is living in this community and knows that her (or his) personality doesn’t quite fit with the others. She might feel she has to keep her mouth shut (“stay indoors”) so as not to risk people gossiping about her or getting irritated.

[Tim Murphy]

Context. I knew immediately who wrote this. What terrific young poet is a navy wife? A book of these will be published by Northwestern University Press this fall when this very promising youngster will be running this board, helping another spectacularly gifted kid discuss, well, the kids among us. And Janice, don't scold me. Voice is to be earned, not spurned. I have seen Cathy's selection file, Mr. Cassity's comments, but no more. And part of the fun here is the guessing game. Well, this was a slam dunk for me. I pretty much side with Cathy on this one.

[Kate Benedict]

I feel almost physical pain when I look at the suggested truncated version which sacrifices a central theme (at-sea-edness) and an important setting; if this is written by the person Tim and I believe it is written by, the truncation would also rip the poem from its author's literary mission. Yes, we are reading just one poem here but it is part of an opus; the poems will illuminate each other. Like Yeats's do, remember?

[Rick Mullin]

The poem certainly stands on its own, apart from the author and others of the author's poems. It is very nice, in fact, to come here, especially, and read a poem by an anonymous author.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

I like this poem so much that I wish the hiccup weren't there in line 6, in the extra syllable of "symmetrically." That line above all, I think, should have been perfect. But aside from that quibble, and excellent sonnet, with all the right details.

[David Rosenthal]

I like this one a lot. I think the suburban thing is a bit overplayed generally, but here it is done well. Also, the title and the final few lines add a unique layer to the typical insta-cul-de-sac setting. There are no false moves here, and most poems or other works going after this sort of thing have false moves. There are some excellent enjambments here as well where the line stands well before the turn and meaning alters subtley after (L2, L9, L11, and even L5 and L6, in a way). Nicely done.

David R.

[Terese Coe]

Originally Posted by Turner Cassity

Navy Housing


On Jones Street every house is painted white,
each door is white, and every yard adheres
to certain rules: the grass at ankle-height,
an apple blossom tree bent toward the sun,
a single bush trimmed squat and round and so
symmetrically it seems manmade. No one
can deviate from others in the row.
How easily I lose myself out here.
Even the dog can barely sniff his way
back from the park. Was it a left we took?
A right? Perhaps it’s safer just to stay
indoors than go off course again. Oh, look—
another flag, another garden gnome,
another sign proclaiming Home, Sweet Home.

The entire sonnet is ironic, and that's commendable. Could be early Levittown and a thousand other subdevelopments--I'm not sure whether "Navy Housing" is a good title or not. It works, but I wish for something that hints at the person behind the house. (I have not read this whole long thread.) "Perhaps" dilutes this too much for me--I'd use those two lines for something like "It would be smarter not to stray/outdoors and"--thus amping up the irony ever so slightly.

The voice in this works well; I see the person speaking as someone who will "let her hair down" with a few drinks, but otherwise not.

[Rick Mullin]

Though I cheered the idea of cutting this down to the sestet, I have to say the poem as we see it up there is distinctly Navy--Coronado Island comes to mind. It works with its title very subtly. That distinctiveness saves it from being another plain vanilla slap at the suburbs.

[Elle Bruno]

This is a terrific poem.
I love how even the dog has lost his instinctual ability to find his way home. 'Barely sniff' sounds so hopeless, so exhausted. How can N ever expect to find hers? And what is home anyway? -someplace that is the same as the next. How did we get here in the first place? N is almost forcing herself not to think -best to stay insides and not confront these issues.
I feel a great sense of dislocation here.
Thank you for sharing this one, Dee

[A. E. Stallings]

I neglected to comment on this one. It is so quietly accomplished that the accomplishment is easy to overlook (the great enjambment 6/7, for instance, or the aporia of the turn). The syntax flows effortlessly over the form. That said, it reads so smoothly that one expects it to be part of a series, perhaps, rather than a stand-alone piece, and one might like more rimes on di- or multi-syllabic words, such as "adheres" (which rimes, interestingly, with "here"). Indeed, the rime scheme is a sneaky one, and not as cookie-cutter as you might expect for such a piece, another aspect of its quiet accomplishment. Enjoyed.