I just want to say…I’m really moved by this poetry. I get fascinated by things, and this is definitely art of a quality that could keep me reading and rereading limitless times. I have this love affair with words (and other things too), and I really like the sound of the flow of your poetry; and some of your ideas really impress me too. To that end, I just want to tell you what my favourite parts were.
I really love
Light of My Life. It was the first poem you posted, and it really stunned me. I like especially the first two lines “Rays of morning sun strike her - / Adding gold strands to the red fire.” and the last one “And the sun is eclipsed.” I think the other three lines are nice, and very essential as a skeleton for the poem, but I really love these lines. The first two flow so well, and they describe so vividly this vision that I have when I read your words. The gold strands and the red fire are especially powerful to me, and like a lot of other people have said, they make me feel deeply somehow. They have this everlasting quality, and they make me think of the fall season, and the turning of leaves and all those pre-winter months which are dearest to me. And it feels so noble and just overwhelmingly majestic. The final line was such a graceful end. It can’t really exist on its own; it’s really the peak of this poetic mountain, but it rings…it just rings…its this sound, and it strikes me like the end of the world. It’s just this end. It has an almost divine quality about it; it feels like you’re talking about a Goddess. And then when I step back and put this all in Willow and Tara terms, it makes me smile; in a way that’s exactly what you’re describing.
There’s also an untitled piece that really strikes me. I’m going to repost parts of it just to let you know what I’m talking about. First, there were the lines “Whose gentle strength / I am awe-fully aware of,” which describe the hands of one of the girls. I really like the fact that your writing is not very cliched at all. I’ve really come to realize the importance of not saying meaningless things; it makes the important things you do say that much more vibrant. This is a quality I like about so much of your work. It’s simple (in length only, really) and clear and moving. The way you describe these hands makes me think of so many magickal things. I imagine this vast power, to accomplish so many things…but the strength is gentle, as if saying you see that power, and you know it would never harm you, but it still amazes you. I like the play on the word awfully too. It stuck out to me, and I thought it was one of the more meaningful parts of the poem.
In the same piece, I just wanted to say I love the entire second stanza. It’s a description of eyes… again, as you intended, they could belong to either girl:
My eyes seek hers, / They sparkle with / A brilliance that bests
Any jewel on this earth. / Radiant with joy, / Intelligence and mischief -
And is that love I see / Shining there still?
Again, with the whole idea of saying only meaningful things, I think this is really wonderful. I wish I had a better word. It makes me critique the way I write. I look at your poem, and especially at a portion like this, and I completely sense the importance of cutting out everything nonessential. I couldn’t see losing any of these lines, and I really like the magick of the way they flow. They could belong to a spell. If I had to choose favourites…absolutely had to? It would be…the two lines, “Radiant with joy, / Intelligence and mischief –“ that describe her eyes. I just never expected this to flow from there, and it was new and unique to me; it made it especially powerful.
I really, really like this entire poem, and I promise the reposting of it is absolutely necessary. It doesn’t have any sort of a title for me to refer to it by. Which, I just want to say, lends it its own unique temporal/eternal conflicting quality. I feel like most of these poems are just these thoughts on the wind, and that they’re the musings of a sort of boundless soul. I feel like I could come back and they could be washed away from a beach by the ocean’s tide. They don’t feel forever in that sense…like they’re beautiful only in the moment. And then they’re forever, because they’re insights into these eternal truths. And the whole concept of this momentary/forever nature many of these poems seem to possess lends authority to their message, because I’m awed by the fact that they can even exist. And they strike me with this purity that I don’t find often; maybe they only speak to me, but I don’t think so.
Darkness falls loudly, heavily - / but it cannot match the /
depth of gloom that resides in my heart. / The self-loathing and fear
a tangible grip around my lungs; / constricting and hindering hope
as it tries to make its way from her / soft smile to my hungry, hurting heart.
Her eyes fill with love, and its / the knowledge that its all for me
that forces the darkness to recede. / In my heart, now, is a summers day.
Her hands meet mine - palm to palm, / a charge, so familiar - so pure.
And our matching smiles / would outshine the sun.
This is like love incarnate to me. The first stanza is less powerful to me than the second is, but I like the whole light/dark, yin/yang contrast going. There’s this definite balance in the poem, and it flows from dark to light, which makes it sweeter. I like the last three lines of the first stanza best because they describe an idea that I can understand really well, but I don’t think is easily describable. It’s the fact that there’s all this love flowing out, but your own fear cuts away at it, and what you ultimately feel isn’t anyway near as powerful as what’s felt for you. This is actually really emotional for me, because I have a problem with issues like this…with never feeling loved by people. So it actually kind of bothers me, which makes me not like it…but I’m still grateful that the lines are there. That they evoke a response, even negative, is good…and it’s supposed to be dark.
The whole last stanza is amazing. The idea of pure love defeating everything else really appeals to me, and it feeds my insane idealism. I love the whole part about the summer’s day in her heart. That really is important, I think. It’s probably my favourite part of the poem, and what makes it call come together in meaningfulness. I can see the brightness of a summer’s day, when you’re with someone you love. That’s in your heart, it’s just wow…I can’t describe how I feel about that part. Sometimes, I think, you just have to say wow when all you have are feelings that are wordless. The hands-to-hands part is really sweet. I think holding hands is one of the most romantic gestures I could ever envision, and it’s powerful in a way I don’t think so many realize. And finally the last line, about outshining the sun. You seem to like references to these eternal, natural objects. It has a very elemental feel. You’ve brought up fire and darkness, gloom and hope, and especially the sun. These are all very powerful in a natural way. And again, when you compare them to something that eternal, and you say they eclipse or they outshine the sun…it’s like saying their love is purer than this forever thing, and I really appreciate that. It’s the kind of thing…the kind of idea, I could probably cry thinking about.
Also, on rereading this poem, to redefine my whole wow part up above, I just want to say this also makes me think of a hand-fasting. Like a wedding of some sort. The idea of this summer, and I see this pavilion or some other really place in the middle of fields and butterflies and flowers and trees and waterfalls crashing into small lakes or streams or whatever they’re called. But the charge and all that makes me think of vows, and this whole idea of being wedded. It’s really beautiful.
So, I should probably end here for now. I have a lot more to say, but this is really already very long. Maybe I’ll post more in a couple of days. I’ve read just about everything except for the fiction piece; it takes me a long time to read any sort of fiction, because I read really, really slowly. It’s like my terrible flaw, I guess. Umm, but I will read it, and I get the idea from just skimming a little, and the concept seems really decent. I’ll definitely make sure to read that.
And just to end with, I want to say that when I conjure an image of what your style feels like to me, I get visions of golden, early-evening light filtering through a stained glass window, or mid-day shimmering down through all the spaces between the branches of a forest canopy above me. I guess I get two separate visions, but they’re really very similar. That’s how I’d describe my way of seeing you and your work. Thank you again for the wonderful poetry; you’ve injected a little more light into my life, and I promise I’ll become a devoted reader as long as you keep writing.
Thank you very much,
Lily Nightingale
P.S. - The only reason I even really got a chance to look at this thread is that it shares it's name with the directory on my computer where I keep everything artistic that I do. It kind of drew me. Anyway, I was writing when I got off on this tangent. I'm going back now...to the writing.
Edited to add: One more thing, that I just wanted to say, because it's kind of surfacing a lot in my mind, is the fact that I'd never listened to the Indigo Girls before I saw your quote. It made me go and download the song (which I always feel so horrible about doing)...and I've been thinking of maybe giving more of their music a chance. I really like that song now...lots and lots and lots...and I know this doesn't belong here, but I figured while I was writing this incredibly long post, I might as well stick this in. Thanks again...bye...
Tara: Every time I... even at my worst, you always make me feel special. How do you do that?
Willow: Magic.
Edited by: lilyophelianightingale 
at: 5/25/02 4:47:26 pm
by Drakkenfyre » Sat May 25, 2002 10:40 am 
, I really enjoyed that story, I hope you do an update, and soon. 
