[Julie Steiner]

Nice, Lexa. I like both the greater regularity and the greater concision.

I wonder if "Just yesterday" would be more effective than "But yesterday."

[Alexandra Baez]

Julie, glad to hear it! Yes, I feel that the increased concision was a nice side benefit of reassessing the regularity. Thanks again for the nudge!

I've been back and forth countless times between "But yesterday" and "Just yesterday," as well as "Yet yesterday." I can't seem to consistently react to any of these in the same way! I'll try on "Just" for a while again, since I trust other eyes with this matter more at this point.

I'd still be interested in your response to this--it wasn't a rhetorical question!

Why is it that so many poets seem to feel there’s something inherently magical or even compulsory (given close alternatives) about 14 lines? Yes, they characterize the sonnet, but does that by definition make the use of 13 or 15 lines in other types of poems less effective than 14?

[Julie Steiner]

It's simply surprise that the poet hasn't taken the road so much more more traveled by, and a little anxious checking on the reader's part to see if there's some obvious reason that the poet chose not to follow convention there. But the poet has no obligation to bow to convention. If I find it distracting, that's my shortcoming, not yours.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by A. Baez

Carl, I'd still be interested in your answer to this …

Sorry, Alexandra. I missed this somehow. I guess the colon does make that tercet a shade clearer, but I don’t see what it has to do with the choice of ellipsis over dash. I wouldn’t use an ellipsis here, but I wouldn’t say it’s wrong either. If you hear a dramatic pause, go for it!

[Alexandra Baez]

Julie, okay, thanks for the explanation!

Carl, I had just thought that a colon and an em dash, performing such closely related functions as they do, would feel like overkill if they both appeared in one sentence. But as I said, I otherwise quite prefer the dash, so if you think it flies, it's back in!

Since you played a key role in my latest revision, any thoughts on it? Does the third stanza work better for you now?

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by A. Baez

Does the third stanza work better for you now?

The only shade of doubt is about “wan, enshrouded lisps.” A sound (lisp) isn’t normally colorless (wan), but that’s poetic synesthesia or something—I’m cool. My problem is more the overwrought, Gothic feel of “wan, enshrouded.” I dunno, though; maybe it’s a good balance for the rosy “lilting.”

[Mark McDonnell]

I think this is really beautiful, Alexandra. Your revision is excellent. There are elements here that could so easily make for something old fashioned or quaint: a spring poem that starts with a vocative O and ends on an exclamatory flourish, seemingly about nothing more than gazing through the window at the changing weather. In some senses I suppose it is an old fashioned poem, but it has none of the stodginess that often comes from reaching to a poetic past for inspiration. There is such delicacy and control of rhythm, mood and language, that you paint this familiar scene with a new freshness. I love "capsuled", I love the opening address to the "weeping window" and how you keep up this address through the whole poem, so that the subject is the "framing" of the outside view of the weather, rather than the weather itself. I love the slant rhymes and the inner echoes of things like "mists" with "drips" in S1 and all the "L" sounds in S3. And I do love that closing flourish. I am partial to a window poem and I really like this one.

Mark

[Alexandra Baez]

Carl, it’s true, synesthesia could be my only defense for “wan, enshrouded lisps," but it's following the lead of "lilting sun"; they're both sound analogies. I, too, have worried about the Gothic feel of the phrase—more so than the metaphorical disconnect/synesthesia--and yet also have considered, like you, that it might be a good balance for the tone of the sun image. I’ll keep churning ideas on this. Thanks!

Mark, thanks so much for weighing in, and I’m really pleased that you approve of the revision. I seem to have a pattern lately of narrowly skirting various poetic pitfalls like those that you describe. To me, there’s something thrilling about doing so if it can be pulled off successfully—more so than avoiding such pitfalls more widely. The sound really led me in this poem, as you might imagine. I was pleased to have come on “capsuled,” myself, as it reflects the sense of the framed scene, as “bosomed” did not. I appreciate your clearly specifying so many elements that you like in this poem, and I’m overall delighted that you have picked up so sensitively on so much of what I was trying to do here.

The one thing I'm not sure is coming through clearly to anyone (because I'm afraid I'm not expressing it clearly enough) is my central point--the irony that whatever scene presents through the window in March seems to embody the essence of reality, even though it may be opposite in nature to another scene that had the very same effect on the narrator even just the day before.

[Tony Barnstone]

Dear Alexa,

Cool one.

Notes rushed out on way to work:

O weeping window [fun pun on willow], braced against the crisp
young day! March has caprices—now it lifts
upon your face in mist, in beads and drips. [lifts go up, drips go down, so the motion is not working. How about

now it lifts
upon your face in mist, then beads and drips.

Just yesterday, it greeted me with clear
views through your panes and into shining air.
Each morning, all of life seems capsuled here

within your little picture’s latest shifts
to lilting sun or wan, enshrouded lisps
of coldness hesitating on the cusp [fine sound-play throughout the poem]

of spring. And only one thing stays the same:
round every pull of whim, round every claim
of weather—your dilapidated frame! [I wouldn't end with exclamation mark--too 19th century]

I wonder if the turn gives away the ending? Capsuled and framed both say the window holds the world. So, there is an opportunity for one more move, a deepening of the thought. Frame of meaning? What's outside the frame? What about those other windows the eyes? What about language, which frames thought? And so on...


Hope this helps! Tony

[Alexandra Baez]

Tony, yes, I’d thought about the inconsistency of “lifts” and “drips” but rationalized that the overall effect was still one of lift (assuming that mists rise from the ground). That’s silly, of course, and your suggestion is great. I love not having to repeat "in," as I love the new sense of motion in time. Why the heck didn’t I think of that? --The noun to verb conversion was just too much of a leap for my mind.

I wouldn't end with exclamation mark--too 19th century

Don’t you feel the same way about the vocative “o” at the start? Could this line have the same punch--could it have enough punch--without the exclamation point? Of course, this may be a moot question considering . . .

your last point. Ah, wow, you’re absolutely right. I will definitely put my mind to that. You do have a way of homing right in on my tender points of artistic denial. [Update: maybe "matter's unrelenting frame"?]