quote:

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I remember best
Seeing the soul dance in your flickering eyes
Like a dipped pencil in a water glass.

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Margherita - Thank you for the reply, and thanks for liking the best thing about my poem.  I'm still rusty and haven't written poetry in years, trying to work myself back into the groove and avoid saying things like "feel your arms around me" (blah).

Capricious - I'm glad the pencil and the water glass came off as a little bizarre.  I had so much trouble squeezing it into so many iambs, and struggled with it to make it work.  I wanted to describe it in a little more detail but I thought, in a sonnet, a metaphor or simile shouldn't be longer than a line.

Maybe I shouldn't have written a sonnet.  Come to think of it, I probably didn't have enough to say to write this poem.

"Words all are evil" puts more emphasis on the word "all" and de-emphasizes "words."  Holds together more with the iambic line.  But on second thought I agree, it comes at the cost of the water-cooler-chat tone that I'd already established.  

For some reason I liked the pause between those lines, but come to think of it, I have no idea why I did.  Probably a shallow and insubstantial attachment to the unconventional.  I usually do write block-of-text sonnets because (like you) I think one of their best qualities is their smallishness.

Thanks for entertaining this not-very-good poem of mine with some serious feedback.  It's encouraging.  I think I'll keep up with this for a while and maybe get back into the poet's mindset.

Sunshine - I feel the same way about you!  It's really nice to be on the blue pages again.  Sad that it's a little more empty than I remember but then again, I used to always prefer the slower forums, and I like the intimacy that you all seem to have here.  Thanks for making me feel welcome.

BluesSerenade - One of my main concerns was that I didn't convey.  I'm glad it did come across.  It's a pretty basic thing to convey, I suppose, but it's all I really wanted to put across.  

Martie - I know misery pretty well, but I won't compare my suffering to that of others.  People have suffered a lot more than I have.  I think I'm just sensitive enough to blow my little problems up into poems.  Thank you for reading my poem.

Marchmadness - Thank you for the kindness.  I don't think I'm at the top of my game, or at least, I hope not.  I want to write more and better.  Thanks for the kind words of encouragement.  

"To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form."
~Robert Frost