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12/25/2014 10:30:04 PM Victoria Schmidt Posts: 1	The Grieving A frenzy, a chaos of celebration all around. Togetherness and ritual imposed while inside of me a splintering No respite, no escape from faces eager to connect to share, to love. Grief is a mongrel here; an agony of burden on the righteous shoulders of joy I can only run, crying out, in frantic search of This tree, this breeze that gives me permission gives me space to breathe to be Its tapestry of lace against a grey ocean of sky shrouds me from expectation, from judgement, defending my right to grieve to peace At Christmas
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2/7/2015 6:31:38 PM Edmund Linton Posts: 14	Excellent poetry - I can relate. I'm surprised it has not been more reviewed based on the number of views. I think a lot of "poets" read poetry like they are reading the directions on a box of brownies. Your work is very thoughtfully developed. There is, however, a bit of redundancy in several of the lines. Maybe: "A frenzied celebration..." ??? I like "togetherness". It implies ritual without unity, but I think celebration also implies togetherness. Ritual, for me, can stand alone. "Ritual imposed..." ??? I think a period is OK for pause. "Respite and escape" may work better as one word...Maybe "No refuge from..." "Connect/share" are a bit too synonymous. I love this phrase: "Grief is a mongrel here; an agony of burden on the righteous shoulders of joy" However, an agony is always burdensome. This is beautiful insight: I can only run, crying out, in frantic search of This tree, this breeze that gives me permission gives me space to breathe to be But the structure is a bit distracting. I even think, "Its tapestry of grey sky" works with the ingenious line of, "shrouds me from expectation". Again, excellent start. Run it through the crucible a few times and I think it will be gold.
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2/20/2015 4:14:24 PM Graphite Drug Posts: 81	What is interesting here, “this tree, this breeze” ispersonified or used to describe a holiday experience filled with festivity and tragedy. As an audience the tragedy is not specific, but connection with the tree andbreeze described helps explain how the author approaches it. Again, withrelation to tree and breeze, “tapestry” and “sky” are used to abstract andexplain the situation further. Poetry that uses multiple subjects to describe asingle theme is difficult. Some or many readers should understand this poem.Your approach is well crafted. Keep writing more.
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3/6/2015 9:58:42 AM K.M North Posts: 97	I liked this more once I got to the ending, with the christmas theme throwing me off what I had originally thought. Perhaps share a bit about the issue you are having with the holiday? We get alot of ideas as to how you are handling it, but nothing besides the last line to let us know what you're running from, or perhaps just christmas in general? Either way, I liked it. I'm always a fan of something that leads you in one direction and then reveals the twist.
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