| Soft landing and take-off
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2025-08-29
I like this. The idiom, the language, both secure and fresh. It's saying something new to me, and it's landing very well. Brava!
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| The little mute boy
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2025-08-25
Garcia Lorca was topnotch. I love everything about him.
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| in the little things
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2025-08-23
I like this. A lot. Simple, direct, luminous.
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| What the Curtains Hide
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2025-08-06
I am cherishing this beautiful, tender portraiture of so many lives seen and wondered about! Thank you for posting this poem.
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| OH THE HEAT! (Addid Lines)
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2025-07-05
Ken, thank you for this. Much kinship with you in my distaste for extreme heat, and in our shared love of poems!
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| Let Our Song Shatter Their Chains
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2025-07-05
I like this very much, the lamentation and the gentle counsel. It's landing very well with this particular reader! (And belatedly, welcome to the bay!)
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| Abou Ben Adhem
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2025-06-25
One of my favourites.
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| A Glimpse
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2025-04-21
Smutty jest!
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| Where Does Sound Go?
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2025-02-01
I love your work. Thoughtful and gentle, with wit and wisdom evident but never over-bearing. Bravo, mate!
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| J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle
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2024-12-31
Modelled on the poem above, but not a translation:
This Bird Has Flown
I have lost my soul's delight,
Sweet songbird, dark nightingale:
I would follow her in flight.
She has flown into the night.
Still I search, to no avail.
I have lost my soul's delight.
Beauty pure, untouched by blight!
Without her, my strength grows frail.
I would follow her in flight.
Now I see the cold sad sight
Of stars in heaven, and I wail:
I have lost my soul's delight.
Sleepless till the dawn's faint light
Slowly turns the sky quite pale,
I would follow her in flight.
Heaven's splendour, once so bright,
Now appears wretched and stale.
I have lost my soul's delight;
I would follow her in flight.
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| Yellow Log (Theme Challenge)
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2024-10-31
Bravo. I like the succession of punchy verbs in the 2nd line of the second stanza most especially.
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| SOME BEDSIDE MANNER!
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2024-10-29
Ugh, hard no for me on this clinician. Competence does not preclude the personal gentling civilizing touches to which most of us are accustomed, and which most of us expect. Not mutually exclusive, not a zero-sum game.
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| STRANGE WORLD'S (poet tree final chapter?)
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2024-10-29
It's very good to see you writing, Alan. I thoroughly enjoyed this poem-offering.
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| here comes the dawn
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2024-10-29
I cherish both the sunny-ness and the prosodical ease!
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| together with heavy hearts
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2024-10-28
Liking this very much, finding it all kinds of wunderbar. Thanks for trying the challenge!
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| News About My Father
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2024-10-04
Isabelle, I'm holding a compassionate heart-space for you and for your concerns.
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| The Daily Deal (revised)
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2024-09-15
Oh, Isabelle, my deepest compassion. And my mom has costochondritis, and it's no fun. Sending all my most ardent thoughts and wishes for healing and health.
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| The Saddle
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2024-09-14
Beyond beautiful. A very satisfying exploration, memoir, poem.
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| Free verse haiku
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2024-09-13
Chris! So great to see you. I'm enjoying this poem immensely. Its vividness, its detail. Peace and light. Tommo
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| two as one
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2024-08-23
I have a poem like this, I'd have to look for it, about a smiling encounter with a Muslimah at a newspaper stand. Remember those?
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| midnight
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2024-07-21
Ooh, that is just.
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| R.I.P. F.i.in.e Moods (1989-2024)
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2024-07-14
Isabelle, thank you for sharing so deeply, so closely. I underwent a similar but smaller change two years ago (shifting from Tom, what my dad was called, to Thomas). We have our phases of life and our adjustments to make, so yes, farewell, FM, and hello IB M!
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| Void
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2024-06-24
Dougie, it's palpably cheering to see you.
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| My City
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2024-06-24
A thoughtful and admirable poem. Thank you for posting it!
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| OBSIDIAN NOVEMBER
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2024-06-18
Darkly enchanting!
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| Truth of the Matter
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2024-05-22
FM, sending the big compassion, and my ardent hope that once again life will land gracefully, even joyfully, with you, that the glums might blossom into gladsome light.
But sometimes, I guess, we hafta sit in the crap for a while. Sorry that seems to be current weather conditions. You are valued and esteemed, amiga. Be kind to FM, she deserves nothing but!
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| Guts and Glory at 28
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2024-04-07
What Larry said. That's a last line worthy of the greats. The whole poem gains our gladly proffered respect, but wowzers, that conclusion!
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| summit
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2024-04-03
Yes. I think I might try something similar. Bravo on both variations!
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| REPEATING ONE SELF
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2024-04-03
I like your style: winsome, direct, genial. Always a joy to read what you write, Alan.
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| FORGIVE ME (a personal view)
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2024-03-01
Oh, Alan. So poignant. And so simply and beautifully made.
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| will you watch telly with me, please ?
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2024-02-21
Wow! I generally flinch from poems that have "that word" in them, but I admire this one. It is forthright and strong throughout. There's an immediacy, a physicality. The poem grabs you! And I marvel that you wrote a whole poem using mostly monosyllables: only two words are disyllables, and two more are tri-. Sorry, geeking on technique! As an old song says, "Your technique, it leaves me weak"!
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| Nostalgia
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2024-02-19
Vivid and affecting. Thank you for sharing it here.
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| Ashtray Girl
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2024-02-09
Compelling and disturbing (I intend praise) at once. Also, the Eliot-echo at the end of stanza one is a nice, understated touch.
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| I WANTED YOU!
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2024-01-21
I permitted myself a chuckle at your description/summary! A well-made poem about a theme that never grows old.
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| Sally Brin (pt1)
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2024-01-21
Alan, this is a fine poem indeed. Thank you.
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| Conversations no 3
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2024-01-21
This is all kinds of wunderbar. I love it! Thanks for sharing this vignette!
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| Our Beloved Abbey
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2024-01-09
FM, so sorry. Sending compassion and a hug.
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| HOW TO FLY A KITE
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2024-01-08
Vivid and winsome. As Marianne Moore might have said, the reader is happily implicated.
Or as I would say (!!!), this is a poem in whose language we would like to linger awhile.
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| THE DAY AHEAD
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2024-01-08
Marvellous, Alan. The roasting coffee sounded especially appealing.
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| always
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2023-12-25
This might be phrasing it weirdly, but I trust and cherish the voice of this poem.
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| PARTY AT THE FLOWER MILL xxx
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2023-12-25
Alan, a joy always to enter your world of words and gentle humour. Happy Christmas to you and yours.
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| Ramblings 641
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2023-12-25
FM, thank you for sharing your innermost thoughts. I concur with those who urge you not to think so little of yourself! You perform an amazing service here at the 'bay, and I'm sure you have touched lives of those closer to home. Please know that this message comes with warmest Christmas wishes, and the invitation to write to me at any time. Peace and light.
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| Interim
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2023-12-25
There's a certain grace to the poem. Small scale, but a valid poem with just claim to endurance.
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| Nativity
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2023-12-24
A poem worthy of its noble theme. Happy Christmas, Dougie.
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| Before me
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2023-12-17
Compelling. It merits close and attentive re-reading!
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| ANOTHER GLORIOUS NIGHT
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2023-12-13
So winsome, so companionable, the sentences simple but luminous with exactitude. Sharp as winter, one might say!
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| Grateful
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2023-12-10
I very much enjoyed this poem, for all the reasons cited by others. Vivid, immediate, congenial, surprising! Well done!
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| Hospice
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2023-12-08
Joseph, wow. I honour your words and I honour your journey. Be assured of my most ardent prayers. Thank you for your consistent kindness here at poetbay. You have brightened many a moment by your poems and comments. I hope I don't sound prematurely eulogistic, but thank you, thank you, thank you.
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| The Novice
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2023-11-27
The situation (or should it be called a predicament?) is one in which we gladly proffer our sympathies to the speaker of the poem. The poem is ably executed, especially when one considers that it was the poet's first!
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| Cheap Imitations to Court Inspiration
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2023-11-24
Bravo! I love UM's slant rhymes.
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