Follow Tim Miller on three distinctive jaunts at Isacoustic!
Immense thanks to Barton Smock, who just published three of my poems at Isacoustic. You can read them here. They are among my favorites from the past few years, and so it’s wonderful to see them all together; whatever it is I’ve been trying to say with history and mythology, landscape and autobiography, are all there.
Thanks also and obviously and endlessly to my wife, Jenny, who is the “you” addressed in the poems from Orkney. There is no better companion, travelling or otherwise.
Barton’s own poetry can be found at Kings of Train, and is well worth a look; as are other familiar names he’s published at Isacoustic: Daniel Paul Marshall, and Robert Okaji.
St Magnus wins it for me. Tim manages to really hold the attention in a long poem, which is a feat in itself & the ending is a beauty. This line too
“remember death while you live so the living
might remember you when you are dead.”
i am easily wooed by chiasmus.
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I admire Tim’s long poem ability. I can’t manage to sustain anything longer than maybe 50 lines.
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i have to tame myself, i can easily get carried away. i have a bull whip & a tazer to keep me obedient to sensible lengths.
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I’m simply limited. 🙂
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Going off on a tangent can be limiting too, unless you nail it & sometimes you are so hyped on the flow that you forget to reign yourself in, which takes the casting of a good critical eye on yourself & a whole lot of editorial scouring, with an a firm scouring brush.
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I’ve learned to rein myself in fairly well, but there are still those times…
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i think you’ve done a sterling job, i have told you before, your use of breath & space is very accomplished. With each successive poem, each draft, we inch closer to a better sense of the margins & interior of a poem in the context of its subject & the effect we hope to transfer to readers.
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My temperament is better suited for short pieces, and I no longer feel the urge or need to torture myself with attempting longer forms.
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I tend to think out longer forms which allow me to carve up the concept into managable singlets. Apart from the Yoon Yong poen which is uninterrupted & coming along nicely.
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Robert, these are superb. I don’t know where to begin. Love the skin that remembers, the north broadcasting spores to inhale, and the saw that does not cut! Wonderful!!
Dwight
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You should visit Tim’s blog for more!
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