My Promise To You

That you have outlined an admirable goal. I would hope that all of us aspiring writers adhere to the same principle. I have no criticisms. Good job. Always, Cat

drifting sands of consonants and vowels excellent description. Truly a study of the depth of a writer. Mom

Your last paragraph should be emblazoned in our hearts for all time, Jess. Brava! ~A "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood." T. S. Eliot

This is a very very good poem. I do think you are sallying forth here. Continue on this ambitious route. Brian

Shape-shifting? Yes, I believe that's the essence of it all - bending the reader's perceptions beyond the common limitations of the words. Poetry = verbal lycanthopy ... I like it! Great poem for exercising the mind, Jess. Thank you. Mike "not all matterings of mind equal one violet" ~ e e cummings ~

Excellent poem, and I'm decided to say that you haven't failed me, I really love this poetic mission statement of a writer. Thank you. Saludos. Hugo.

to the thought in the third seems to me abrupt, and a little disjointed. In the first stanza I'm reading about your comfort zone, so to speak, that part of your cognitive sphere where you do not bump up against infirmity of confidence that you know what you know. I.e., not too near the edges of your knowing. I take 'boring,' 'real,' 'sublime,' and 'ridiculous' as the names of those significant cognitive boundaries beyond which you prefer not to go. I admit to being unsure what these terms mean for you, and I use my own understandings of these as first approximations only. In the second stanza I'm reading what I must take as an artist's appreciation of the artist's craft---'origami' seems an especially apt metaphor, for its connotational load. The standard material is manipulated to produce art; paper becomes a swan; words become a picture, or a pathway to felt passion. I read also a destructively high standard of evaluation of [your] poetic work; what is not spectacular is for that finding poor. In the third stanza, I am derailed. The mind of the first stanza is forgotten, and feelings take absolute priority. The extreme evaulation of performance of the second stanza is embraced, and the value of performances above the lower extreme is annihilated, without explanation. Moreover, 'mediocrity,' which had not been mentioned before, now is revealed as a 'trap' with 'jaws,' strong words to apply to an otherwise innocent fact of Gaussian distribution. The poem is very effective at showing how harshly you drive yourself to excellence, and that may be good enough. The development of the ostensible theme, though, is still incomplete, although it can be understood in part as it is. The lack that bothers me most is that great leap from 'mind' in first stanza to 'feeling' in third stanza; how do you get from there to there? That seems to me to touch at the core of the poet's problems; we are beasts who think, or thinkers with bestial (qualities? defects?); we live in worlds, or we live in words, and must choose. That sort of thing. The stuff of debate in poetry. And well worth our efforts toward answers, even when the answers are (perhaps necessarily) incomplete, answers in the interim, mediocrities. Fail me with another such mediocrity, please. Perry

This is pure brillance Jess I loved it ... Really well thought out and put so well There’s one trap I must never fall into: the jaws of plain mediocrity; for if you are indifferent in feeling and my words illicit no emotion I’ve not done my job and have failed you in turn, failing myself. Those words are so true and they resonated in me ... Love Jayne x x

I very much like the sentiments in this poem and the delivery too. You have been pushing yourself and it is something lovely to watch. Brian