mwirth: Good idea to add the roman numerals. It helps divide up the sections.

j_moody: never would've thought of it without your feedback :)

cgroom: This is a cool sequence, and an interesting point to raise, esp. in this context.

sprice: It sounds very Wallace Stevens-y. Playing with paradox or contradiction in a very fact+fact=3facts way.

j_moody: whoa! WALLACE STEVENS. Go easy on the god-like comparisons, here! I love that guy, I made some purposeful journeys through Connecticut to visit places he mentioned in poems (Higganum, Haddam, etc.) and read certain ones like "Sunday Morning" again and again. But I will have to take your word for it that I achieved something even remotely close to his verse here.

mwirth: I like this sequence, too. It is a nice way to frame the argument. The imagery is original and evocative.

alecia: I still like these lines. They sit better here, though, now that you've given the reader more of a clear image-context. To agree with Rat, the sequence is much stronger now, I think.

alecia: Most of the words in this section fall easily into each other, but I pause on the t's and s's of detritus-- I feel like the uniqueness of its sound and length might draw too much attention to it in this particular set of words. Would you want to use a more fluid synonym that blends into the tone of your other sentences? Or do you want it to stick out?

j_moody: really? i thought the t's blended in with saunter, mantle, shifting and the s's blended with scuff, saunter... of course I am pronouncing it in my head as dih-TRAI-tuhs and you may pronounce it DEH-trih-tuhs, which changes it completely, so I'm not sure if I've taken everything into consideration. "Loam" could have some alliterative value with damp and make, I guess.

alecia: Y'know, at second glance, I think it's maybe the clear 3-syllable-ness of it, rather than the sounds. It's the first 3-syllable word since "progression" two stanzas back, and I guess in my head, the rhythm feels much more quiet here, like walking, composed with all of the 1- and 2- syllable words. Detritus somehow shifts that, but maybe I'm on crack. I do like the idea of "loam", though.

j_moody: I think "loam" would make it sound more intimate-- accentuate all the other "m" sounds. I c hanged it.

mwirth: Cool, I love biological imagery.

j_moody: I do too, and the original target of this love poem just happened to be a doctoral student in microbiology... so I really couldn't avoid the comparison. I loved to watch her prepare the gels and explain the process of electrophoresis to me... but now I'm giving too much away.

mwirth: I like the repetition of "I have an idea".

cgroom: I love these lines.

j_moody: note to self: might add something incl. word "partitions" (within the living space of, or between the rooms of our life/lives) to trace back to the white walls/beauty line.

sprice: grammarninja: I think these should be "It's", right?

j_moody: I believe both versions are acceptable now, unless "It" is a proper noun and you're trying to create the possessive form. Like: "My dog's name is It. It is so funny, and smells really bad. Sometimes I spend hours sucking on It's bouncy, red rubber ball." Please note that both "ingrown" and "ingrwon" are acceptable now, too. Similarly, you can refer to three or more things or attributes of one thing using either two or three commas now-- both are acceptable. For example: "The anteater's side was covered with a huge, suppurating, and highly eroded ingrown cyst vaguely reminiscent in its shape of the nation of Eritrea." is equivalent to "The anteater's side was covered with a huge, suppurating and highly eroded ingrwon cyst vaguely reminiscent in its shape of the nation of Eritrea." Please note the differing number of commas. I tend to use whatever rule lets me type fewer commas or apostrophes, but I use as many words as possible.

laura: This is a common mistake and it's worth spelling out the rule, which is simple as well as hard and fast. "It's," with apostrophe, is only used to abbreviate "it is"--although if you really named your dog "It" as its proper name, the possessive form would be "It's," as in "the dog It's unfortunate name." The possessive of the pronoun "it" is "its." So in formal writing, without contractions, "it's" never appears.

On "overgrown" and "overgrwon," I can only ask for some of what you're smoking.

You're right about the commas.

alecia: If you're trying to get rid of the cliche-parts, I almost think that I would cut everything above this line in section V. The "tearing down distance" line-- along with the desire to be close-- seems to imply many of the same things that you state explicitly in the beginning of the V section.

j_moody: Hmn. that's a good thought. lemme mull it a bit....

j_moody: done.