[Roger Slater]

Do you mean "chimney"? I think of chimneys as being on top of the house, but you're describing the mantelpiece, aren't you?

L6 and L12 both have an extra beat.

I like this overall. Reminds me a bit of a Borges sonnet, "Las Cosas," which you can look up if curious.

At least on first reading, I was a bit slowed down by trying to figure out all the relations, since you specify quite a few (my mother, my daughter, my grandson, my father, grandpa) and I tried to follow along since I thought they would figure in the poem a bit more than they ended up doing. On second reading, though, I took them simply as grounding for the fact that the speaker is in a house that is full of family/familiar objects, and the exact relationships were not important.

[Carl Copeland]

A delicate still-life: nothing moves except your grandson at the baby grand. A list, with only two departures from literality: the future making space and “ageless angel faces.” That might be enough for me already, but you also give us a peak into your family history and meditate on the continuity of generations and their passage into anonymity. The guitar seemed out of place at first, since I thought it was your father and your grandson’s grandpa (same guy) who played the piano and sang. On second thought, I decided it was your grandfather who played the guitar and sang. In any event, I enjoyed this very much, Mignon.

[Yves S L]

Hello mignon,

For me poetry is a simple games of lines, of finding enough emotionally resonant lines, and you certainly do find the lines. The metrical inaccuracies have already been pointed out. It hits the familiar emotional points of 20th century metrical writing: [1] The epigrammatic wisdom saying: "the future make new space for well-worn things"; the exotic specificity: "still keep the Ikebana flowers straight"; the emotional interjection: "My ostrich egg!"; the final lyrical lift: "of ageless angel faces with no names".

Just all round solid metrical poetry technique, well modulated emotionally!

.Quick suggestion/edit for metrical regularity (you might just have to go rework the movement of the poem):

Amid embroidered napkins, iron frogs
my mother placed inside a crystal vase
still keep the Ikebana flowers straight,
displayed as usual on the mantelpiece.
I’m in my daughter’s house. My grandson plays
my father’s baby grand and sings like me:
guitar and passion—quite a treat to see
the future make new space for well-worn things:
the leather couch, a tarnished silver jug,
Peruvian paintings on the walls, an egg!
My ostrich egg! An abstract marble nude,
a copper fish, a fist of dried out mud,
and on the étagère, old photographs
of ageless angel faces with no names.

Yeah!