[John Beaton]

This one taps into a common theme of modern culture, the placebo role of what Nemo describes so well as plastic health in keeping people in play in the world of relationships. Right from the start, the title catches the jargon. L5 is a neat touch. L wants a relationship but is too shy or self-absorbed to speak to the person on the next machine.

I too find that stanza break interrupts rather than paces the poem, and "for lives and loves denied me" and "reach the seconds of a second chance" may stretch a little.

Overall, I think this is a very good one, with lots of popular relevance.

John

[Janice D. Soderling]

I have read this so many times, and I cannot find a thing about it that I would want to change. I see the beauty of Kate's suggestion, but it would, I believe, make the sonnet frivolous. And I think that N is very serious indeed. He has had an infarct, survived and is now getting back in shape, physically, but also, as far as he can do, spiritually. I just can't hear N using that terminology in his situation.

If N is listening to Gordon Lightfoot, he is not running very fast on the treadmill, and we can assume that we are listening to a geezer between 50 and 60 who has had his first warning. He doesn't want to communicate with young execs, or other old men. He wants his youth back and all his dropped balls and he know he ain't gonna get none of it.

I'm thinking that the group that will appreciate this most for its insightful and incisive content will not be the youngish poets. But who can fail to appreciate the precise diction, the perfectly chosen words.

I join a clutch of others

A closure to die for.

I race my heart and travel nowhere fast

[Carol Trese]

This great sonnet expertly follows the rules of the form and sounds fresh and contemporary. The deftly chosen words are a work of wizardry. I hear the "clutch of others" both as a group of animals and a grasping or holding tight. "Churn" is brilliant, it rings of the loved ones who toil together in life (churning butter has a down-home feeling to me), a boiling over or stirring up, a vigourous and monotonous stamping. The "seconds of a second chance" states a simple truth musically (everything is momentary), and the seemingly simple "ball I dropped" comes off without sounding trite. I like "attempting to replace the past" because of the bare fact that it is futile. You can't take it away or get it back, though you can "race your heart and travel nowhere fast." Great ending.

[Tim Murphy]

Carol, a warm welcome, and I think you are right. This will be getting a vote from me when Cathy issues her call for ballots.

[Alex Pepple]

This is a deftly crafted sonnet, highly descriptive, casting a vivid scene that's almost palpable. Despite the competent execution, I'm fully sure why I fail to get excited by it ... maybe because of the replaying the highly commercialized and all too ubiquitous exercise industry, and the clichéd perception that such establishments are not only for working out, but also for exercising physiqued vanity and, for hooking up. All in all, the poem doesn't rise far enough above that cliché in my opinion. Possible remedies could be to make it more stark and/or take it somewhere unexpected.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Janet Kenny]

I think this is terrific except for the last line of the octet which feels like an inversion although it clarifies itself as one reads. It is resolved but the discomfort on the way remains. The idea is great and if the writer thinks we don't know who he is he's kidding himself.
Janet

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

I like eveything about this sonnet, including the way it risks banality with that third line of the sestet, with its internal rhymes, and the "girl in France" so predictably in the memory of the speaker I imagine. I think he is making fun of himself, like the speaker of "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," and he does it well, with just enough melancholy.

[Henry Quince]

Of course there's no grammatical inversion in the iPod line -- the verb doesn't come before the subject. English allows a lot of options for placing adverbial phrases and the like, and I wish people would stop trotting out "inversion" with a frown when this freedom is used with an evident payoff.

"In a dark doorway on the other side of the street, a shadowy figure lurked."

It seems to me that the author of this sonnet has followed a sound rhetorical instinct in introducing the headphones first and the specific music afterwards.

[Janet Kenny]

"People" are not usually bothered by inversions and of course this is not one. It does read a little ambiguously on first read because of the stanza break. "People" have adjusted but mention it as a small trip on the first reading.

[Michael Cantor]

Like it all very much, except for that vapid fille Francais that Central Casting sent over to fill the hole in L12. That line offers a free pass - an opportunity to add more depth and complexity to the poem - and I'd love to see the entire line - or "a girl in France" replaced with something more evocative and ambiguous, ie:

that pass I dropped, my vows, a sideways glance;