ecargo23 Mar 2006

Hey Ranger--nice job. Cool lyric to riff from. I like the wistfulness/tenderness of this. In general, I think it works pretty well. Some of the connections you try to make seem a little off to me though--Dickens? I don't get Dickens from any of this, the reference just distracts. Ditto for Cain--seems to come out of no where, and not in the "a-ha!" good surprising way.

Lines that could use some work, IMO:

Everything thereafter is gone from recall- [after, maybe, instead of thereafter, and I don't think you need "recall"; everything after is gone? More direct and more encompassing.]

Lines a little "meh":

The ending of a failed love, so soft to part

Wind screams a melody, so terrible

Shrill blood-iron voice to hail [the thuddiness of "blood" and the softness of "iron" work against "shrill", also, what's a "blood-iron voice"?

Oh, heck, easier to just go sequentially--

No thorn words thrown ["thrown" doesn't seem to work with "thorn" though I like the play on sound]

Lose the nightingale. Keats has forever claimed the nightingale, and the rest of us look like asses for imagining that we can use it. (Yes, there was a nightingale in a poeme I recently posted. Yes, that makes me a hypocrite and, likely, an ass.)

Curtain of twilight [cliche]

I like these lines a lot, though I think they need tweaked (as they'd say in PA) a little:

As though somebody cried 'Love blinds its domain'
I shut my eyes to make sure
[of?] A scene, a dream of you, a figure once well known [maybe lose "a figure"?]
Who spoke of gothic romance, love arcane

[I dunno about "gothic" here--it's too obvious, and the term "gothic romance" makes me think of old Mills & Boons type books--the waifish heroine, the tortured, scarred, reclusive hero wrestling with broody ghosts; the crazy wife in the attic, all very _Rebecca_ ("Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley - Manderley - secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls. Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, and suddenly it seemed to me that light came from the windows. And then a cloud came upon the moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of a past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain. But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back to the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France...)"]

Oops, sorry, I have no concentration skills left.

Enchantment, haunting song
Bound and still in awe, enthralled [again, Cain ref seems off]

Storm of emerald, ever irresistible [?]
From this deep, dark mattress vein
Grave [?]
[Not sure I get this]

uncertain sun, slow spindle [good image]

And you haven't visited for a while, Jenni
I still think you're beautiful [I like this, simple and wistful]
Though I never was
Little more than mortal mundane ["never was little more than"--grammar's off--never was more than or was little more than]
Like a silver streak fresh from water's skin [water's skin I like, silver streak is too familiar though]
Lying sunk in bedspread sprawl [nice]
For the company of a broken mirror [for the? recast this line maybe? ]
I was going to sit here this December in disdain [disdain, rhyme aside, doesn't seem like the right word to me]
Just drink, then think of nothing at all ["and" instead of "then"? I like the ending, by the way]
And you happened to call ["but" instead of "and"?]

Okay, now that I've nitpicked this to death--I really like the loose rhyming throughout and I think that you maintain the mournfulness, the hauntedness, throughout. I really like this, period. Good poem. Terribly long comment.