10 Comments
User's avatar
Gary Michael Dault's avatar

Too clever-clever for me.

Expand full comment
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro's avatar

I agree.

Expand full comment
Jen Edwards's avatar

Great poem! Full of so many beautiful turns and language!

Expand full comment
Karin Sometimes's avatar

I love this! The idea of the rain licking Edit Piaf's grave and telling the poet how it felt... and all of it!!!

I also have a question - was this poem written with blank line spaces after each line? I notice how Substack/the internet will double space my poems unless I paste them in text format, and I see that spacing happening in other poems, and am curious as to whether it's deliberate or not.

Expand full comment
shannon's avatar

To skip the auto double line spacing, hit shift enter. It had to do with diff programs and how they read paragraph breaks. Shift-enter ensures it's not read as a paragraph break regardless of program (usually) ☺️

Expand full comment
Svetlana Litvinchuk's avatar

This really depends on where it is being copied and pasted from, but yes it happens often. I often delete the double spacing manually. Though, sometimes the original is double spaced, in which case I leave it to stay consistent with the poet’s original intent.

Expand full comment
Emma Goldman-Sherman's avatar

I really appreciate the double spacing here which seems, for me anyway, to amplify the line break surprises by giving more space to them. I assumed it was intentional here. I did it in a poem I titled "Nothing Touching" where keeping the lines separate became part of the form to follow the content of the poem (a very literal example).

Expand full comment
Svetlana Litvinchuk's avatar

Yes, it is intentional in this one. I agree, the double spacing allows the reader to move through it a bit slower, which is a nice effect.

Expand full comment
Bill Scott's avatar

Nice

Expand full comment
Tara Mesalik MacMahon's avatar

beyond beyond

Expand full comment