Thread:George Dance/@comment-8199347-20130827042750/@comment-4097182-20131006170727

Yes, I did finally get it, and read it through. It's a quick read, as you say. Since your next question is sure to be "What did you think of it?", I'll jot down a few quick thoughts:

1) The quality of the pieces was good; there wasn't one poem I thought you shouldn't have published. That, and the small size, makes me think you rigorously selected from a much larger body of work, and you deserve kudos for that.

2) I'm not a fan of confessional poetry to begin with, so this didn't move me a lot. Still, I identified with much of it: the idea in "True Hate" of burning the family home reminded me of a poem of mine, "My Father's House," where I expressed the same idea.

3) The homoerotic bits read OK to me, as in most cases I could simply imagine them as hetero sex. Still, I think they're a big plus. From the outside, it looks as though there's a big, mutually supportive gay poets' community in the U.S., and it would be to your value to plug into it. (Of course I don't know who you'd have to sleep with to do that ).

.Intriguing words or phrases would jump out at me. like the alliteration in "Weaved in from my sins / Like wicker / With little Wiccan ties". While I didn't at first like the rhyming in "Gum Wrapper", I grew to appreciate it as automatic association (as if the speaker, finding his partner is cheating, is losing it).

My favourite wa "In Bed with Bird Chirps": it's a look at sunrise and birdsong that I think we've all experienced, but I don't remember reading before. And I liked the beginning, "Another morning / Blues the sky", with its pun on blues.