mervin

I always love your particular use of repetition. The emphasis lends a serious situation a kind of wry sense of humor, which is almost at the same time, an acceptance, coming to terms. I feel your personality in it. This is one of the things I can't do when I dabble, but only one.

Also, you have a lot of food/empty bowl images. Classical feel. My diss. was on The Golden Bowl, which made much of the emptiness of a flawed bowl. It carried the entire representational, figural burden of the main characters' marriage. It perpetually emptied itself. Henry James's idea came from some classical allusion, but I've forgotten it, and I'm too lazy to go look it up.

"The Long Moment"--I can't get that poem out of my head. I hear its lines when I'm doing my morning coffee. That's a good thing, isn't it? For the poem, anyway.

I'll break my own rule for this, because I recall my bowl image is derivative. I learned it from Mr. Joyce when I read "Portrait of the Artist", when I was a young man. If the poems bring you pleasure that is a good thing.