>My issue here is that I think the context of the Yeats piece is pretty essential as without it I don't think I would have connected ace with WWI pilot. (Maybe you could cheat and have the title clue the reader in.)  

I think I'll do that, in case this poem happens to end up being printed in any context outside this sub. Here, at least, a hyperlink in the self post seems to work fine.  

I agree with you that the meaning of this piece as it relates to "An Irish Airman" would be almost totally obscure without an explicit reference to that poem. This was a piece that I messed around with more than others, and only in its final state did I see the connection to Yeats. At that point, I felt the two poems were totally inseparable, and I didn't think I could put this out there unless other readers could draw the connections for themselves. I think this sort of intertextuality lends a cool new feature to this form; that readers, when trying to solve the "puzzle" for themselves, can take some

First off I think this series has been cool. My issue here is that I think the context of the Yeats piece is pretty essential as without it I don't think I would have connected ace with WWI pilot. (Maybe you could cheat and have the title clue the reader in.)

My stab at a reading is that this is a narrative piece of sorts about a Flying Ace who is in q bad way, literally divided from and distant from the sun. Nevertheless he finds solace in this situation. I think without the context of the Yeats poem there's no real reason to suppose why he is feeling so.

What I think is cool about this run of pieces us that they operate as puzzles. Beyond just the pleasure of finding subwords in words, theres a cool effect where the readers fill in the content themselves after some effort and so maybe feel more of a sense of ownership for what they read.

Ha, that's good. I'll have to use that somewhere.

I love that you've thought of a very cool interpretation completely independent of my original intentions. I don't know if you read the W.B. Yeats poem that I cited as my inspiration, but my intent here was similar to the second idea you had: of a pilot, high in the sky and in a situation of mortal danger, experiencing a moment of absolute clarity.  

But I love the idea of it being a starship pilot too: that seems to add a whole new layer of openness, exploration, and awe to the poem, since that pilot is surrounded on all sides by fantastical celestial objects that are constant reminders of his place in the universe.  

I think this poem could easily go both ways, since all we can really rely on are the concepts of "Sol" and "ace"--the radiant star, and the heroic human being who is juxtaposed to it. And why not have it both ways? Isn't poetry one of the few places where we *can* have it both ways?  

Thank you for the lovely comment.

Sol is the sun. It makes us think of the source of life, and of our home in a celestial context. An "ace" is someone who is very good at something, often used for pilots. I thought here, given the proximity of "sol", of a star ship pilot. Someone in a hundred years, flying around our galaxy in a ship. It is not a time of war, though. It is a peaceful scene. There is solace.

It occurs to me that my interpretation is probably influenced by my affinity for science fiction. I can imagine that "sol" might simply mean the sun as an earthly observer would see it. I imagine, then, a pilot flying through a clear sky with the sun overhead. The placement of the letters indicate that the "ace" is not flying directly towards the sun. The sun is very bright, but the pilot is at an angle to it.

"A terrible beauty is born."

Some of the most haunting words in poetry, right up there with "Quoth the raven: Nevermore!" and "April is the cruelest month."  I'm glad I understood your poem.  It's clear that a lot of thought goes into these.

I really love this critique. Not only did you nail what I was going for with the spacing, but you've also invoked another Yeats piece and (I think) uncovered the mythological roots of this poem.  

That idea of "terrible beauty", which I don't think Yeats invented, is nevertheless epitomized in his ["Easter 1916"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/43289)--and there are definitely shades of that idea in "Irish Airman" as well. The concept of "sublimity", which you mention a few times, is a totalization of that "terrible beauty". I can't help but think of the Romantic paintings of [JMW Turner](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner), which excellently employ the sheer emotional force of light and color to produce the "terrible beauty" that you, Yeats, and I are thinking about.  

On the subject of Icarus: I'm a big fan of the idea of archetype, and the notion that all our most treasured art and literature come from riffs on ancient, fundamenta

It's considerably prettier than facTory, but it lacks the bite and intrigue.  FacTory had politics on its side to make it more meaningful.  This merely has a Yeats poem.  While Yeats is the real deal and overwhelmingly talented, he is much more obscure than the very real and pressing matters of the rightist backlash happening now in the Western world.  Thus, this piece lacks immediacy, and really much of a reason to care about it.

However, if one takes the time to read the Yeats poem, this little gem takes on something of a new character.  It becomes starkly sublime.  It reminds me of Icarus: the pilot flying close to the sun, above the clouds and earthly cares until a fucking missile probably barrels down and destroys him.  In this regard, the poem is a touch grim, but not in an overwhelming way.  It more so presents the message that life is full of both beautiful and terrible things, and sometimes one can find one within the other.

As a last note, I love the way you use space in th

May I suggest a name for these, aside from "one-word poems", which lets face it is a little clunky to say.  Let's call them "logopoems", a portmanteau of "logo-"  meaning "word", and "poem".  Or, perhaps "monopoems", a similarly constructed portmanteau from "mono-" meaning "one".  


If you're interested in what the word actually means: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ace

I like how you written the word solace, so that it looks like the words sol and ace. sol stands for sun, and ace is very similar to the word advantageous (I think.)

One-word poem #4