Dear Reader, Poem by Daniel Y.

Your poem is convincing because - of many things. I started typing before I had thought through what I want to say. I was immediately impressed by Dear Reader so I abandoned my procedure and find myself struggling for words. Here goes: the brevity of the poem is a key element in its success. Additional lines would have weakened the last three lines where you focus on a moral issue - The speaker the pale memory wants to save us from its fate by its confession. My comment is in clumsy prose; your passage is swift, sharp and poetic. I like the first three lines which describe the speaker as a book: it is so precise and vivid I was pulled into the poem, and the revelation that the speaker is an abandoned memory was well handled. My comments are so clumsy compared to your fleet poem, but I want to show my appreciation to the writers by an extended comment. Many people write, in effect, Nice poem. I like it. Now read my poems and write me comments. There's nothing wrong with this impatience to have your poems acknowledged but it doesn't give the writer anything to build one. The late, great William Stafford said, The good news is there are 40,000 poets in America; the bad news is only 500 of them read poetry. I'm doing my part to correct that imbalance. And your poems deserve the attention of a longer comment!