‘‘Til We Forgot: A Lament on Recovery’ by Amy Foreman

Excellent! This piece has both a poetic soul and (to my ear) perfect meter. I enjoyed the hopeful message … with a little bit of a warning at the conclusion. This is SCP at its best!

An excellent poem, beautifully written by a master of the form!
Bravo Amy!

Allow me to add my penny onto the mounting heap of opinion: this is North American religious verse and, as such, may find a publisher in the myriad heretical ‘zines read by blue-haired schoolmarms.

It’s, of course, not my cup of tea, but you may be able to make a buck.

The meter and smooth flow are beyond question. Well done.

Tweedie,

Let’s stick to poetry. I am well-versed in theology and philosophy (much more than you), as I once contemplated becoming a priest. And, doubtless, I would have been a great one.

The desire to be resurrected is only the primitive desire to live forever as youself. Why would you want to be Tweedie again, a weak liberal ex-pastor sans a flock? Look at yourself.

Read The imitation of Christ, son: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_of_Christ

Right. I remember all those Polish jokes, mostly about screwing in lightbulbs. But have you heard this one? How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: None, because the light bulb contains within itself the seeds of its own revolution.

As it happened, the best friend I had in my whole life, Bob Piwonski, was (obviously) Polish. Some eight years my senior, he was like a big brother to me. In his later years he developed a fondness for poetry, and he introduced me to Neruda and Rumi. Sadly, he no longer walks on earth. To some people he was known as “Big Bob.” In fact, I once saw him lift the engine of a small Cooper automobile engine with his bare hands. He should have been a linebacker in the NFL, but he was more of a swimmer. I expect that I shall never have another friend to whom so much of the quality of my life is owed. Many of his oldest friends were Italian, including Richie Laypo and Paul Palotti, both of whom I got to know and who accepted me into their circle. Bob’s death struck me as hard as the death of my own father.

Leo, Authentic fire radiates both warmth and light. Your comments offer little evidence of either. You threaten me not with fire, but with acid. I have no need to attack you in return. Sadly, the damage being done to your reputation and credibility is self-inflicted. I wish it were otherwise.

Lest we forget, our mission, if we accept it, is to advance the cause of English language poetry, and Ms. Foreman’s “Lest We Forget” does just that.

She takes the ballad form and applies it to verses of Deuteronomy in a unique, seven-stanza poem that is remarkable in many ways.

The opening, ordinary and nonchalant, is breathtaking in its quiet, earnest tone, a first person, plural point-of-view, reminiscent of T. S. Eliot, as in “Journey of the Magi”. The metaphoric mechanics of lines 3 and 4 work surprisingly well.

Stanza two, as it dovetails into stanza three seems static, almost verbless, containing, as it does, the memories of pain and sorrow in their “field of view”.

Stanza three opens with the abrupt “Now gone”. The situation is almost the reverse of Macbeth’s, who having had “everything” is now losing it all:

“I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, odedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.”

Note the positive listings of the two authors, “blessing, favor, grace” and “honour, love, obedience…” as well as the echoic “in its stead”. I only bring up the Shakespearean lines for comparison.

In stanza three, I’m a bit unsure as to what is meant by “Eden’s better place”; but I really like the sentence, and “Awakening” is an excellent adverbial expression placed perfectly.

Ms. Foreman demonstrates a remarkable talent in closing, stanzaic lines: stanza four follows chronologically, but its simile startles, requiring thought to disentangle; while stanza five continues the poem’s movement, but isolates the verb with commas for emphasis, the “locust years” another fine phrase.

Now I know I am looking at the poem poetically, but there are other tacks one could take. Another literary critic could focus on the meaning of the poem, while another could emphasize the imagery (or lack thereof), and another could look at rhyme, etc. Ms. Foreman’s poem yields many possibilities. Nevertheless, continuing on, the first two lines of stanza six utilize remarkable verbs; while the parallelism of the last two lines conjoin in a verbless, striking fragment. By the way, in looking at the original Hebrew of Deuteronomy 8: 10-15, there are several parallel phrases. Because I had never thought about these particular verses, I shaped a poem from the original. Here is the unpointed admonition “Be careful!” from those lines in Hebrew: השמד, the bluntness of Hebrew always impressing me with its crisp strength, which helped give such force to Milton’s poetry.

The final stanza of Ms. Foreman’s poem pulls the entire poem together from its narrator’s vantage point of no longer deeply believing in God. The poem is not spectacular, but it is impressive. It could easily be situated neatly in an anthology of English literature from Chaucer up to the present. It reminds me of an Eliotic voice in a Keatsian ballad using occasional Dickinsonian techniques.