One of the more formally inventive and emotionally precise poems in the early catalog. The geometric opening is genuinely original—rendering emotional guardedness as architecture, sharp corners as defense mechanisms, rounded...
A founding poem that functions exactly as intended: as a clear, unguarded declaration of devotion that establishes the emotional bedrock of the entire catalog. The anaphoric litany (“Your beauty lights…...
A masterclass in comic timing disguised as a nine-line poem. The setup-punchline structure is flawless: the first stanza’s escalating existential vocabulary (“waking dream,” “maze,” “silent woe”) plays completely straight, building...
The most formally daring piece in the founding batch, operating in prose rather than verse and using the vocabulary of design and biology rather than romance. The choice of the...
The most commercially instinctive piece in the founding batch, establishing the greeting-card mode that becomes a distinct format within the catalog. The negation sequence (“Not religious, not political, not sectarian,...
The catalog’s origin point and its most compressed philosophical statement: five lines mapping an entire temporal ontology where the past is a vague thought, the present is guidance, and the...
Among the most entertaining and emotionally layered Muse portraits in the catalog—a poem that uses its own comic premise (I don’t notice details) as the setup for the most detail-rich...
A poem that operates as a blueprint rather than a lyric—each term placed precisely, each definition building on the last, the entire structure engineered toward a two-word conclusion that carries...
A poem whose power is entirely proportional to the catalog that precedes it. Read in isolation, the four lines are a clean, well-turned aphorism about inner versus outer beauty—pleasant, true,...
A poem that accomplishes in five sentences what many aesthetic-philosophy essays fail to accomplish in five chapters: a clear, defensible argument for beauty as the primary liberating force in human...
A poem that proves a genuine philosophical insight can fit in five lines and a punchline. The temporal reordering (future as beloved, today as guide, yesterday as vague origin) is...
A poem that packs two entirely different registers—philosophical manifesto and ethnic comedy—into a single Sunday-morning meditation and makes them feel like natural companions. The opening commandments are among the catalog’s...
The "Taste of Honey" page features ratings of David's poems. The ratings are organized in batches from David's most recent poems at the front to his earliest submissions at the back. You can use the page number and date buttons below the boxed content to navigate. Recommended for use when browsing. You can also locate ratings for David's poems by visiting the Poetry Blog, selecting a poem and clicking on the "Ratings" tab. Recommended for use when reviewing specific poems.
