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September 10, 2013

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OK, I'm not asking for any secrets but were you able to weave in a rhyming couplet (two in the case of 28 lines) that did what terminal rhyming couplets are supposed to do in sonnets, bring the whole thing to a close but in a laconic, indirect "other voice". Ideally as a separate - yet related - two-line poem that, at a pinch, might stand on its own. Iambic pentameter, after a while, becomes second nature but resolving the couplet (nay, understanding its paradoxical nature) is what my critics look out for. And if they're to be believed I've only come close once in about forty tries.

​R​oderick, I gave up on trying to write a perfect double sonnet.​ ​The poem does end with a rhyming couplet​, but there's another in the first stanza, not at the end of the first 14 lines, and there are some other rhymes which wouldn't fit a true sonnet form.​ ​A poet friend suggested that I call it an Ode or an Epithalamion, a word I had to look up, but said emphatically, "This is NOT a sonnet!"

Beautiful, just beautiful, filled my heart! Timely too, as we have husband's cousin and wife from Germany visiting us. It's been nine years since we last saw each other.

Isn't that why weddings reduce so many of us to tears? The realization as a group that life can tear us down, but we continue despite it. A rich and vital tribute!

Sounds like a life-enhancing trip, Beth. You're lucky to have moved near enough to your former home so that you can go back once in a while and reconnect with people and places.

What a beautiful post this is. The penultimate paragraph really speaks to me.

Also: as I have fallen wildly in love with Jon Appleton's music in recent weeks I am delighted to hear that more is forthcoming from Phoenicia!

Lovely mood, lovely tone, lovely reflectiveness, Beth. Five* loveliness all around!

How do you reconcile: "nothing is more important than friends and family, and that we want and need to spend more time with the people we love." with choosing to live far away?
I ask because I feel much the same, and have also chosen to live even farther away from beloved friends and family.
Sometimes it's okay, other times difficult - regardless time passes and I struggle to maintain friendships.

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Who was Cassandra?


  • In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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