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Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Ah the Fretwork - a reply to @JenifrMilitello


This poem is the result of a brief correspondence with @JenifrMilitello about her lovely poem Fretwork that was recently published in Poetry London.  You can read Militello's poem here.



Poems may seek to emulate prayer
As if the choicest words 
Were a remedy for loneliness
A substitute for thought 
Or a palliative for despair
As if the sinews of the tongue alone 
Would suffice to make us whole again
Through the miraculous collision
Of phonemes and air


But a poem cannot achieve
What a poet doesn’t dare
To be whole requires more 
Than a quantum of assonance
Fricatives and epiglottal sounds
Rather it starts silently
In the chambers of the heart
And only through steady practice
Slowly emanates from there


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