[Chris Childers]

Yeah, I really like it too. Maybe it's easy to speak against it, & use the head to find things not to like (over-modified, sentimental, too easy, not in touch with "the world," or something), but none of that negates the pleasure that it gives, at least for me. It's sort of like hot chocolate: it warms the soul.

Chris

[David Rosenthal]

Lovely -- the sounds, the colors, the texture -- everything works together to carry the reader away. Nits that popped up after further examination were easy for me to overlook since they didn't strike me in the first couple of reads. It seems like such a wispy, airy piece, but the lineation, syntax, and enjambments are staggeringly well-constructed. Beautiful.

David R.

[Michael Cantor]

Very well crafted, but the anti-contemporary sense of it - the dated language, the adjectives, the sentimentality, all those points already noted - overcome my admiration for the craft. It's a ship in a bottle - finely wrought, but from another time and place and not pertinent to my taste in poetry, or my own poetry.

[Petra Norr]

I love how the light “drizzles” through those birches. It’s a fine opening to a fine sonnet that I enjoyed reading. As others have said, “woolgather” was a nice touch.

If this sonnet has a weakness, it’s in the middle of the text. I had trouble with another Bake-off sonnet that asked me to accept a simile that came midway and that was key to the ending. I couldn’t buy that simile and consequently the sonnet fell apart. In the present sonnet – Bed-time Story – there is likewise a simile in the middle that’s key to the ending:

he swings his load to strew
the strands [the straw] on pillowed drifts like yellow locks

I think snowdrifts can look like pillows, but the rest of the simile (straw = yellow locks) feels a little shaky to me, even if the word "strands" does its best to make it more credible. The simile feels very contrived, which of course it is – it’s a set-up for the ending of the sonnet. I don’t think this weakness is devastating, though. I can still say I enjoyed the read.

[Rose Kelleher]

Just so Michael won't be the lone grouch, I'll admit that this one really isn't my cup of tea. The title redeems it somewhat by announcing that the sentimentality is deliberate, and perhaps wistful. But relying on all those modifiers makes it all just feel too easy.

Maz wrote a wonderful poem, "Sky in the Pie," that evoked a kind of wistful nostalgia for the world of children's storybooks. Since it's been published, maybe she won't mind if I post the last few lines:

The clouds melt on your tongue
and sweeten your throat. You can chant
this day across the meadows, & call the lost flocks
home. The sheep & the chestnut cows. The cows
& the wild black horses. The wolves & small quick foxes.
All the lost beasts of your kingdom.
Call them home.

It's a lovely poem, full of sweet-dream images, but it uses language inventively and doesn't suffer from the Hummel-like cuteness of this one.

p.s. "woolgather" is brilliant though!

[Terese Coe]

I too am put off by the saccharine tone and "happily ever after" line of thinking here. From "Snuggled" to "spread" is cliched, even stifling in its sentimentality.

[Kevin Cutrer]

"Enchanted lands" was the coup-de-grace for me, but "sustenance" dealt a heavy blow.

Having said that, the circularity of the poem is masterful in the way it brings images of the day's labor to bear on the bedtime idyll, woolgathering minds and hay-colored hair.

[Alex Pepple]

This is an intricate, masterful painting of words ... an ekphrastic without accompanying picture, leaving it to us to draw our own picture. The musicality is wonderful. OK, maybe it's a bedtime story for adults because the children won't get most of its diction, but it has such sensory appeal - tactile, aural - that even the kids will get its essence and enjoy it as well. Well-written!

Cheers,
...Alex

[John Beaton]

Thanks, all, for the excellent comments.

As Alex indicates, this began as an ekphrastic. It arose from a print our family-room wall, Shortening Winter’s Day by Joseph Farquharson (http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displayPicture.asp?id=84&venue=7) . I always liked it because it reminded me strongly of scenes from where I grew up in the north of Scotland. With its golden light and the shepherd looking after his sheep, it brought back childhood feelings of coziness, safety, awareness of the beauty of the natural world, and some of the early comfort of the shepherd/sheep imagery of religion. Around my old home the trees were birches.

I associated those feelings with story-time for our kids. At the time I was reading nightly to the two youngest. We had lovely evenings and, among other works, got through virtually everything by Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein, and complete readings of The Old Man And The Sea and Watership Down. These two daughters had idyllic early childhoods on our acreage on Vancouver Island and they lived in a magical world, with no significant fears or worries. On the nights I read to them after coming in from work, I was bathed in their feelings of happiness and security.

The poem emerged from putting these two thoughts together.

The commentaries told me how easy it is to presume that a reader can just step right into your world. You always have to remember that they start out in theirs.

But I don’t think I could gain much ground by attempting to change this.

I couldn’t bring myself to charge it with evil beyond the small hint at “ghostly”.

Janice did a fine job of expressing my defense of the straw/hair metaphor that Petra questioned.

And to those who believe “childhood or parenthood was never like this”, I just have to say “for us it was” and acknowledge that I wasn’t successful in sharing this world with them. I think Michael nails the difficulty when he says, “It's a ship in a bottle - finely wrought, but from another time and place and not pertinent to my taste in poetry, or my own poetry.“

Thanks also to those who did like the poem and who expressed their reactions so warmly.

I was delighted that it ended up on the short list in such excellent company. I learned a lot from the comments, and I enjoyed the competition very much. Thanks again.

John

[A. E. Stallings]

Why not title (or subtitle) this after the painting, and alert the audience that this is indeed ekphrastic? It think that would add another layer--the idea of imagining into the painting.