All Comments on 'the wind in the pines my love'

by twelveoone

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  • 13 Comments
vrosej10vrosej10about 13 years ago
Vivid Dude.

Quasi-pantoum? I see (hear) and appreciate the repetition but don't entirely recognise the style. Very nice though and haunting. It actually reminded me of a time in my teens when I was blind for a week. The first stanza made me think of someone refering to being a newborn baby (essentially blind and obsessed with heartbeats). Getting a recommend.

buttersbuttersabout 13 years ago
the sounds in this...

are almost hypnotic. with each re-read it pulls me in more.

there is a sense of the newborn about it, but (for me) i see someone traumatised - possibly a coma victim awakening, or someone suffering from severe ptsd as evinced by extreme memory loss.

the pine-scent heaven brings me a duality of woodland and disinfectant, and the disinfectant (hospital/care home) seems to come through the stronger when combined with this:

a heart drum beat a languished life

played melodies quaint and strange

which says heart monitor to me, special care unit.

it doesn't matter if this person is a soldier, a 9/11 victim, an auto-crash survivor; what matters is the thread of awareness and the coming 'home'.

AngelineAngelineabout 13 years ago
What a towering shower of word play!

You've got a lot going on in this poem and it took me several reads to get a feel for it. I love the way the absence of punctuation takes the poem in various directions, love the laps/lapse plays, the alliteration and assonance (like quaint/strange). There's a sadness at the core of it that the ending doesn't really relieve but I think that's a good thing. I stumbled over "viscous dusk," but the rest of the strophe supports it well. Is there a purpose for "word" in one strophe and "words" in the next? I wasn't sure I understood that. But "no words cross spidered page" is an excellent image: it suggests multiple meanings as does most of the poem. You've gotten even better at that (and you were good at it last time I read a poem of yours). Really good writing.

GuiltyPleasureGuiltyPleasureabout 13 years ago
Oh boy!

Too intimidated to make a meaningful comment other than I love this poem and would give it much more than a measely five if I could.

Tess

UnderYourSpellUnderYourSpellabout 13 years ago
~

This says coma victim to me also, still in this world but not of it and it is the more poignant for that. The victim striving to understand and retrieve his former life and finally making it back. Very beautiful, written with compassion

PoetGuyPoetGuyabout 13 years ago
Curious form,

where each strophe seems like a strayed variation on the one before it. Poet Guy likes the semi-rhymes, the simple statements, the almost regular meter to the lines. He is confused as to what this is really about, but that may not matter, so long as the scent is not simply the Pine-Sol ambiance of an institution.

Or, even if it is. Well done.

twelveoonetwelveooneabout 13 years agoAuthor
*

Title, while being a bit of cruel irony and a sort of self parody ( matsukaze mon amour a poem about spy satellites) does mention "Pines"; the first line states:

"when I was blind..."

so it may be a bit of poetic lying because I could see the forest and the trees, and thus not legally blind, it did look I was headed that way. I did have a reasonably clear view of vision to right and up. I could not read, and still have trouble, and I could not recognize faces. When it started to heal, I saw spiders off to the left, so many I had to wear plaid shirts.

raconteuseraconteuseabout 13 years ago
This,

oh yes, this…luminous, dreamlike, disarming, lovelier for all that. Thank you!

AChildAChildabout 13 years ago
Finish me.

Figuring out is fun to do. You use your words to make a mystery of meaning. The emotions that ring clear are of loss and romantic love. My personal interpretation is this poem is about an emotional awakening from a period of self inflicted handicap. It is both beautiful and dense. Yet, the voyeur in me wants more. The ending is abrupt. I do enjoy the way abrupt endings have a way of pushing imagination off a cliff, but can't help thinking you could fill in the blank better than me. Loved the repetition and the laps and lapse was awesome.

SeattleRainSeattleRainabout 13 years ago
~

it all spins down to spider drums

perfect

5

greenmountaineergreenmountaineeralmost 13 years ago

Others have said hypnotic. That's how I'd describe it too. The absence of punctuation stymied me, but the images were so powerful that I read it again and again. Enter "hypnotic effect," much like a chant. I'm not sure if that (deliberate omission of punctuation) was intended to produce a hypnotic effect. No matter; it did.

todski28todski28over 9 years ago
there is brilliance here

it actually feels blinded by the repetitions, as if the flow shrouds the meaning to the point where you are trying to assemble sight through fingertips for the first time. there is a deep sad resignation as if the narrator has after a few days of being blinded has accepted his "fate" in sounds of heart beats, and the soft scurry of spiders feet.

as viscous dusk enveloped me

to me gives the dark a liquid feel, thick syrupy as if you subverted the cliché "moving through molasses" and points toward the way being blinded stunts the way you have to move about slowing it all down.

any way 5ed,

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