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Member Since: Dec. 06, 2011

TalkingEarth

Smashwords book reviews by TalkingEarth

Percy and Me 'neath the Yum Gum Tree (a poem) on May 16, 2012
(no rating)
At last I've had the time to be able to focus my attention on your words Elaine. What an ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE you have wrought here! This is your voice as a story teller at its absolute finest and refindest. This is the rhythm and timbre of a spectrum of your vocabulary that wells from your pen like a symphony, blending instruments, each of whose voices are drawing from echoes of voices that have blended into a single voice with which in this poem you sing. This is a seamless blend of vocabularic economy, not only evident by the lack of syllables that serve solely as padding, but by your exercise of poetic license to invent the occasional word when necessary. This is a twining of historical, whimsical, science and esoteric allusions that constructs, through the use of the double sestina form, a chord uniquely knotted to keep the reader following its length until the envoi neatly ties and tucks all the diverse strands into a single knot that leaves us swinging along with the poet beneath the branches of the Yum Gum tree. This is the inventive brilliance of a poet who has taken the time to learn a complex poetical form and then fearlessly adapted it to suit the precise needs of her vision, polishing it like a lens through which the depth and breadth of her humor and education can shine through and create a real jewel of unprecedented order where their light focuses. And no matter which way, or in what light that jewel is examined, the edges of the carefully crafted facets turn ordinary combinations of words into clever turns of phrase that sparkle with the mixture of archaic and avant guard vocabulary into sprites that twinkle through our akashic imaginations leaving a trail of joy behind. I joy in the delight as I read it, the same delight I hope that you undoubtedly felt as these fine verses flowed from that deep sea of Veritas from which your quill drew ink.