All Comments on 'Ice Storm'

poem has been mentioned in today reviews

"the sterno flame

of unconditional love"

~ Imp

You have a real gift for weaving together physical detail in evocative, moving fashions. It's easy to write this sort of poetry badly, and difficult to do it as well as you do. I particularly loved the wind's small house and the turkeys nibbling on seeds that they imagine. Oddly, the only line I didn't care for was the one Imp liked best. "Sterno," for some reason, kills the buzz for me. But I loved the swift, knowing break from the freezing world to "she wants to get laid."

What really works for me in this poem is that powerful contrast between the icy wind and the heat of desire, made powerful and yet also pathetic by the vastness of the cold around it. It reminded me of a line from Jack London where he describes the world as bare, only the freezing immensity of space touching its surface. There's a fascination to the heat and barreness working against each other.