The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

1.  I sometimes visit two sites. In one of them critiques are sometimes sardonic/snide, which I don’t see on TTB; in the other you have to do 50 critiques before you can submit a poem (I took a break about a year ago at around 25). Both of them seem too big for my liking.  A forum I was on before c...

All that work to save Martha's carcass, when after we no longer needed passenger pigeons we tried hard to wipe them all out! We preserve evidence of these milestones long after we've forgotten why they mattered to the first seekers who created them; what they were all for. Why do we seek them now? E...

Trevor, thanks for your input. I like tossing poems into the air and watching how the stanzas land. You never know what you'll discover.

Jackie

Dave, I do like the original version. I prefer its conciseness and understatedness, and in my view the pacing is right. I like not knowing the relationship between them. Especially, I like that his reason for coming back is held in her premonition. In version two where his return is as old as the mo...

    [hr] Table Etiquette   It’s easy to think you’re different, immune,  but with only a little genealogy, analyzing your line,    you can trace yourself back to The Devolving. The Jumpstart  preceded it—I know, too remote, it being  so uncontrolled and all—but in the case of Devolving,    names ha...

Sorry, I get really so very tired about the appressed, oppressed suppressed, victimized and downtrodden woman thing.

Hmmm.

Hi Eric, I think this quote from Dave summarizes how sad I feel about this poem: the powerlessness of this man to articulate his life By the time we reach the end, the words "Apparently" and "Allegedly", presented as if they are from law enforcement reports, appear to come directly from the deceased...

Linda, this is so beautifully constructed. The simplicity of it makes it strong, built as it is on two points: the kneeling and the washing. Each line afterward adds to the meaning of the kneeling and the washing. Even the listening is based on this repetition. It's a kind of prodding form of discou...

Hi Eric and Dave,

I'll come back to this, but after a first glance I just wanted to register that Kalamazoo is located not far from where I grew up in Michigan. Eric, is this based on a true event?

Jackie

Of course you're right, Gyppo. Now that I look at my post in the morning light I'm uncomfortable that I wrote something so gender biased. And I love that you're passing on such a respect for nature in your family.

Jackie