BRINGING BACK SCRAPS

nice. reminds me of the greek underworld. the gathering of heroes after death.

I enjoyed this very much, I also bring back scraps. Enjoy your times when you bath in beauty, and may your couplet always be true:
"with tales that make folks cry or smile
or pause and give them deep reflection."

this poem tells me that you are recovering and getting back to your rhyming best

I loved the title ..such a scrap is indeed invaluable...

regards,...

well, you'll never get published in the New Yorker or in Poetry Magazine as you write in rhyme. (Unfortunately they have lost touch with the very soul of poetry for the 2000 years.) You have not only made the sin of rhyming, but you have made your poem comprehensible to boot! Dana Giola famously said in "Can Poetry Matter" (was a best seller) how since 1960 all academia and publications declared rhyme defunct, and the result was the total loss of the reading public who weren't themselves poets. Rhyme is poetry as a key signature is to music. Most folks associate poetry with rhyme.
Well after the publication of his book came rap. It is often (most often) rhyme in the extreme,
placing all the poetic narrative in that devise at the expense of all others, including imagery, metaphor, and color. So rhyme is back, just not the way you are writing it which is in the traditional way of presenting. Its rare to hear an adjective in Rap, even as basic as "astonished eyes". I think you are in good company, like a realist painter who chooses to paint the landscape as he sees to express the craft, just like in past centuries. It is a tradition which I am glad you are continuing in a very relaxed and comfortable read. Poet and general reader alike will delight in this style and no one will question that it is a poem. I cannot say the same for a good part of the things I see published by the modernists, or academia. It's like anything one calls a poem is a poem because it is declared it so... I suppose any scribble on a page can be called a poem today, but not by the Scribbler.

I practice the old craft of rhyme from time to time, but I also see the value of free verse- the psalms are written that way, and many memorable works. There are some modern poets who do both very successfully in English - D.Thomas, Lowell, Auden etc. I think there's room for "formalism" (the old way) and the modern in the museum, and hope you do as well.

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