SUBJECT>Re: Evidence of Change POSTER>Asher EMAIL> DATE>1111348888 IP_ADDRESS>dyn129-100-215-79.alh.reznet.uwo.ca PREVIOUS>85082 NEXT> 85164 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

Jack, I'm not sure if the anapora (and) is working effectively here. Or maybe I'm not sure why it is inserted. It seems like an ironic ploy (at least to me) to get the reader thinking about the poem here, as disunified segements of thought--perhaps. The part that really sparked me off was the narrative intrusion and the various word plays. I love, though from that "evidently." I thought the stuff in brackets:("How did that happen?" gasped her
metronome") was too obvious:-) I thought you could use more fluid word play in the first bit...and humour. For instance, something like: "Observe Mary observing God, or not.
To illustrate another type of energy...)

Sort of fun:-) And instead of "a" pendulum, if you want to riff of Consider the Lilies (is that it?) "Consider the pendulum" perhaps.

Switching some lines around adds effect, possibly:

Observe Mary observing God, (or not.)
Consider a pendulum to illustrate another type
of energy. Pull her mass and release it.

(some paring down here and tightening the devices would tighten the logic/grammar, perhaps.) I would lose the ands and make the reader make the leaps...actually all the conjuctions...

Kindest Regards,

Cricket

Evidence of Change

Observe Mary observing God.
: To illustrate another type of energy,
: consider a pendulum.
: If we pull her mass aside and release it,
: and if the Ten Commandments say, "Thou
: shall not covet,"
: or if you say, "My saxophone swings back
: and forth,"
: and if Mary loses height swinging
: from either end to the center,
: and if we draw on our childhood expectations
: of unqualified love and acceptance,
: admit calmly that the most important feature of
: any cycle
: is transformation, no matter who kissed her
: after class,
: ("How did that happen?" gasped her
: metronome.)
: then evidently it is by virtue of being in
: motion
: that she is able to climb up again
: and again and repeatedly
: the machinery by which she returns
: is any moment where she has been,
: a dissolving past she jazzes between.