Away And Apart Comments

I first read this poem in April - that's about four months ago but it still has a great impact on me. Without any false emotion (read: sentimentality) you make the separation as palpable as the print on the screen and both you and your main squeeze (I like that idiom!) try valiantly to overcome distance with your imaginations. That's what makes this such a memorable and impactful poem: it summons the imaginations of self and others to ease the crisis. Near the end of his life Wallace Stevens wrote, WE SAY GOD AND THE IMAGINATION ARE ONE. Yes!

AWAY AND APART - A poem of frustration, trying to close the 1800 mile separation - If all efforts were rewarded, there would have been a breakthrough, because the poem details every angle of trying to circumvent the sheer reality of all those miles. Memories, joking, metaphors, sarcasm - you use it all, but they're still just words. There's a tradition of poems about the physical separation of lovers. I like Antony's promise in Shakespeare's play: OUR SEPARATION SO ABIDES AND FLIES/THAT THOU RESIDING HERE GOES YET WITH ME, /AND I HENCE FLEEING HERE REMAIN WITH THEE. Just words but so affecting.