All Comments on 'Pico'

That last line gave it away and made it too easy;

I'd have written,

"But you remain silent."

Heighten the mystery and

Let the reader Goggle Pico.

I concur with the first comment. The word 'volcano' should not be in the last line. The simple title (which is perfect) does the job.

Great suggestions with the other two comments. I would omit "volcano." Other than that, a simple and lovely read.

. . . picky points. You use both 'combed' and 'comb' in close juxtaposition, and should it be 'teethed' or 'toothed'?

loved it as always Lauren!

great...

I read everything you put out, normally I like what you offer too. This poem ends well, but to me, the first stanza is awkward. It may have been written in proper tense, but it doesn't read/recite naturally.

Agree with the "negative" comments, but I'm doing Bell Curve tonight and I just saw a suspect and quick "H" So 100

So I see

Sand and sky and sea

Wave break in even time

Clouds ripple stretch lazy lines

And it oh so peaceful here

By your silent sunlit side

Rising to meet

A tentative arching sky

In a silent embrace

That could in a furtive moment

Erupt and breathe a slow melting heat

Down so hard to bury us.

The guide says, could be quite difficult, but it’s worth the effort! It goes on to breathlessly offer a fantastic view, but as far as volcanic eruptions don’t hold your breath for one any time soon – last time it happened is more than two hundred and eighty years ago. I always believed that poems and detective stories are quite similar in some respect. You can learn a lot as you try to get to the core of each. I appreciate the fact that the author teased me to learn new facts.

As to the dreamer in the poem, I like the surprise in the last stanza. It forces you of course to go back and forth and search the possibilities of this open simile. One option: If the mountain is like her and she is quite volcanic in her nature, no wonder he is disappointed with Pico’s volcanic said aridity. Somehow I feel that there is no irony here, and that the main addressee is the missing beloved one. Personally, I don’t care for volcanic eruptions –either in nature or in relations, but seeing that the poem walks at the footsteps of Romantic love, a seismic event is clearly the right scale. Having said that, if our longing dreamer takes liking to rumbling volcanoes why did he pick one that would not? In a good simile you want to walk the extra mile and find that what you thought was not there is there i.e. that the unrelated and the un similar (such as the woman and the mountain) are in fact similar in some surprising and refreshing way. When you find that both the volcano and the woman are quite naturally quiet (the woman is not there; the mountain has been quiet for hundreds of years) and that the expectation that there would be anything other than silence does not draw on the surrounding terrain you almost have a poetic melt down.