After a great deal of thinking, I decided that the poem which
stands out most clearly for me in the month of April is Ewan Elliot's Life. There is something timeless and painful about it, even beyond the Christian imagery, which takes it into a deep consideration of 'the way things are'. 
      In some ways this month was thematic, there were outstanding moments in several different story lines, and far too many poems and phrases have stayed in my mind. This has not made my job easier, but it has made for great variety and steady interest. Poems and responses wove together and changed.  Life seems to take the images of Heroes, Memories, sifting and shifting values, the war in Kosovo, the wars of the past and bring them all together, from the worn and embattled Princess with the babe at her breast, to the easter budget, and what has been variously described as an 'incident' and a 'massacre' in Columbine High School, Lyttleton, Colorado. It is a well done, well crafted poem.  For once, numbers - rather than words - underline the short cut, numerical system of values which so chop change our way of thinking. In some ways they annoy me, but then, so does the fact that what this poem is talking about is true.  I'm inclined to echo Bob's refrain, "When will we ever learn?"

          LIFE

  Soldiers sharpen their swords
  Wood shavings from a distant age curl in a carpentry shop
  Chisels and adzes cut squareish grooves
  And cords hold this budget cross together

  They don't have to be to flash they don't have to last long
  There are 3 to make for the morrow
  2 for robbers 1 for a King

  They are all the same
  All weigh the same to carry up the hill on Calvary
  All will die tomorrow
  1 will be reborn

  1 we will remember today.
  Bells will toll and songs will be sung
  The collection plate will jingle
  And the choir will sing

  A princess will breast feed her baby on a hill side, as she walks
  War planes will fly, bombs will drop
  Refugees will flee across borders and live
  Life will go on.

THEMES: WAR AND THE RECOLLECTION OF BATTLES PAST
      When I first wrote this review, slightly before the end of the month - I was most struck by the fact that all the traffic in this echo is being generated by six people. What seems to keep it alive is the level of commitment and responsiveness of those six people, and the way we seem to follow themes and interests along the way.
      At the beginning of April, Ewan was doing two remarkable things. He was posting poetry which came out of the Kosovo Arena, and he was beginning to delve into his own past, into some of its unlovely aspects, claiming no special favours, and making no excuses. Shortly before the first, Terry posted his remarkable Come the Horseman and shortly after the turn of this month, Bob posted his jointly authored poem Kosovo in which he used the very letters of the name of the place to tear open every aspect of the pain involved in the history of the place. I'ld like to say here, that I really appreciate Bob's ability to respond to the poetry of others with verse of his own, and the way he uses that fine mind of his to give such poems their own distinctive slant.
      With the theme of Family and looking into the post we saw how loyalty, memory and even warfare are intimately linked, in the following examples of how these 'poetic conversations' can work.

from Ewan..

   He was hard man was my Dad - inflexible and old
   Set himself standards he expected no one else to follow
   Loved his children without reservation
   Even when they ran off the rails
   Even when he lost his son to the surgeon's knife

replied to by Alice in One of Them

                    You're an adult, you've got duties lad.
               Being human, this time round, just wasn't
               one of them.

Much of Ewan's more moving poetry this month touched on the pain and fragility of parenthood itself, and the adult relationships which go
with having a family, I hope to look at that in more depth later.

The War theme turned back on itself out of the family theme. Memories of a father, and of being a father, tied in with Bob's memories of:

       A sad and lonely boy listens
       as the sirens scream their warning
       and the searchlights begin sweeping
       the skies above for targets.

and Alice recalled a family story of the great uncle who:

       Sat on the veranda with his hands like twisted bone,
       he spat and hacked and coughed his lungs out
       while the matrons local in the town
       shrugged and pitied Aunty May
       and went on planning for their gala day.

Bob reposted: Anzac

        For all those men who went away
        and all those wives who had to stay
        on this and every day
        we must remember them.

placed in the context of his 'memory' poem this is a most moving
reprise, and one I am grateful for..

       we often sit here and cry
       at the havoc that is man's
       answer to irrational politics.

       Oh yes, we have seen it all before
       and yes we will see it all again
       the children of today have
       no concept of the terror.

sadly - as he went on to point out, both then, and in the Kosovo poem -these things have already returned, and with them, the terror of
children.
      Time now, to review what individual poets have been doing and thinking this month past, and to see how they're developing along the way.