The baby slept...

[PrinceMyshkin]

“The baby slept like he knew just what he was doing.”
Anne Enright, “Yesterday’s Weather”
....which is how we want to,
ought to, love: as if the knowledge of it
was bred in our bones, instinct
in our fingertips, gave breath
to our breathing

[Taliesin]

I like your poems. I usually don't enjoy poetry in English much, but in your poetry the words don't get in the way.

I like the idea of best love being so natural, so barely notable when it's there, healthy, to be noted only when it is missing. Fingertips. One of the most sensitive areas to touch on our skin. Only a slight touch with a fingertip of the string of a guitar and there is a sound.

[lavendar1]

I like your poems.

Me, too.

[Riesa]

I like the idea of best love being so natural, so barely notable when it's there, healthy, to be noted only when it is missing. Fingertips. One of the most sensitive areas to touch on our skin. Only a slight touch with a fingertip of the string of a guitar and there is a sound.


well said, Taliesin, beautifully crafted, in English even. :p really, your words are deep, and moving.

sweet poem, Mysh.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I like your poems. I usually don't enjoy poetry in English much, but in your poetry the words don't get in the way.

I like the idea of best love being so natural, so barely notable when it's there, healthy, to be noted only when it is missing. Fingertips. One of the most sensitive areas to touch on our skin. Only a slight touch with a fingertip of the string of a guitar and there is a sound.

Many thanks for this. Yes, I understand how words can sometimes get in the way of communicating a poem - pretentious words or esoteric ones. I rarely use a word I haven't recently used in everyday conversation.

[Scheherazade]

Only a slight touch with a fingertip of the string of a guitar and there is a sound.That is the magic of the string rather than fingertip though... Don't you think?

;)

[PoeticPassions]

another simple, yet deep, and wonderfully crafted poem!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Me, too.

Thank you, Lavendar.

[PrinceMyshkin]

That is the magic of the string rather than fingertip though... Don't you think?

;)

May I suggest that it's more like a marriage of the two as in these great lines from Yeats' Among School Children:



O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

[PrinceMyshkin]

another simple, yet deep, and wonderfully crafted poem!

Many thanks, PoeticPassions.

[Sapphire]

Wow...

Great choice of quote, and really amazing what you did with it. It says exactly enough and has a nice rhythm to it :) Really, wonderful.

Thank you for sharing,
Sapphire

[firefangled]

...and the poet writes like he knew what he was doing.

I knew the breadcrumbs would eventually lead for A.E. to Anne Enright. Do not despair, Prince, or if you must, keep writing.

...gave breath to our breathing. Very akin to one of my favorite WS...like rubies reddened by rubies reddening.

[PrinceMyshkin]

...and the poet writes like he knew what he was doing.

Much as I appreciated the compliment, it got me to thinking: Do I really know what I am doing when I write a poem? I know what I did in the past and that gives me a) some confidence that I’ll succeed in doing this poem but b) the fear that I might repeat myself or fall into some mannerism.

As both the writer and the first reader of the emerging poem, I watch and wait, hopeful of some surprise or of something right. But it is the not-knowing, not precisely knowing, that is so much a part of the adventure and the joy of writing.

[BienvenuJDC]

Are poems meant to be done right?
Or are they just meant to be done?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Are poems meant to be done right?
Or are they just meant to be done?

Interesting question, even though it's a rhetorical one, but I'm tempted to reply contrary to what I believe you expect: So long as the poem is still on the poet's computer or notebook, having done it is enough, but once it crosses the threshhold into someone else's view, one may question whether it has fulfilled its promise. That is, whether something was implied in the title or opening lines but by the end of it the poet appears to have lost his or her courage or inspiration, to have taken an easy or a pretty or a crowd-pleasing exit.

At which point any one of its readers might conclude that doing it was not enough.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Wow...

Great choice of quote, and really amazing what you did with it. It says exactly enough and has a nice rhythm to it :) Really, wonderful.

Thank you for sharing,
Sapphire

Many thanks, little jewel!

[PrinceMyshkin]

One of the members discovered that this poem (and I believe a number of others) has been plagiarized to this sit:

http://forum.3rbdream.net/dream29/the-baby-slept-18043/

but as the page that come up is in Arabic, I cannot pursue the matter further. Do any of you know how to follow this up, or to protest this practice?

[breathtest]

Anybody who has any of *their* own work posted without their permission on any website must contact the website's host and or webmaster: contact link on the site is 3rbdream@gmailDOTcom

and tell them to take it down. Document all that you can, providing links with proof that it's your work, date it was posted etc. and read up on the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA

This was posted by Logos on that thread.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This was posted by Logos on that thread.

Many thanks to you and Logos for this information. I have written to that address and have reported them as well to Google. But who has the time & the patience to go and search on that site for every poem that was copy/pasted from here?

If only there were some way to uncover the Lit-Net pseudonym of the person who is doing this? But if that person happens to read this he or she should be aware of the deep contempt in which they are held.