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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 21m

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 21m

Thanks for engaging with my thread (& allowing me to increase posts to a super-sonnet 15). Few of my recent verses rhyme. But they owe much to my early rhyming efforts. There are few better ways to learn about musical & metrical discipline than experiments with rhyme #poetrycommunity #poetsonbkuesky

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 40m

Reposting this thread on the brilliant Louise Glück on the anniversary of her death #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky 👇

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · Apr 29

Some writers seek ‘relatability’ in ancient myth. Others look to recreate alien remoteness. But in her use of Homeric or bible tales, Louise Glück sets up dialogue between her own family relations & mythic ones. The latter aren’t lazily appropriated. Rather the immediate & the mythic mutually enrich

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 50m

Thanks for this. Wonderful poet. Here’s a thread on an aspect of her work that interests me:

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · Apr 29

Some writers seek ‘relatability’ in ancient myth. Others look to recreate alien remoteness. But in her use of Homeric or bible tales, Louise Glück sets up dialogue between her own family relations & mythic ones. The latter aren’t lazily appropriated. Rather the immediate & the mythic mutually enrich

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

🙏🙏🙏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

🥘🍛👏👏👏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

👏👏👏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

A paean to tea. ☕️ 👏👏👏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

Yes. While wariness about rhyme has a certain validity to it, if it becomes a prohibition then often that is linked to a sclerotic aesthetic which privileges random, excessively subjective word piling in the name of imagism over work, craft, organisation, the saying of the unsayable, and musicality

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

👏👏👏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

Agreed!

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

Seconded.
And thirded

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 2h

🙏💙

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 2h

The 13 posts in my thread☝️(13 despite negative associations is a Fibonacci number) may interest #poetsonbluesky, the #poetrycommunity and perhaps especially those who discussed rhyme with me during the #PoetryTheme prompt. Hope it's helpful to you.

And now there are 14 posts, which makes a sonnet.

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Reposted by Paul Connolly

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 3h

Hi @dragonslayerma.bsky.social Fidel. Thank you for the great ##promptcombo #SimplePleasures. My first is from my collection "These Random Acts of Wildness", (Glass Head Press, 2023)

I Make A Cuppa

Some say it is better with a warmed pot, or with tea leaves through a strainer held over a bone China cup. A specialist shop had a bud float in my clear cup unfurled

before my eyes. Expensive and rare sight.

Indulgent, like days of Imperial splendour when women tea harvester's plight long hours, low pay, working was very real.

My dad national service merchantman mariner kept his life in the loft stored in old tea chests, plywood box, steel battaned edges. Brought home carved elephants for the sideboard.

We collect the wild as ornamental. Domesticate, put on a pedestal

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Rachel @vignettes.bsky.social · 4h

Thanks @dragonslayerma.bsky.social
What a delightful prompt to start Monday morning. My secret simple pleasure that returns me to childhood joy is flying a kite. I keep it in the boot of my car.
#promptcombo #simplepleasures

Simple Pleasures

The wind frets at the pebbles,
salt spray burns my face.
The kite jerks like a stubborn gull,
its red plastic heart flapping,
tail tangled, untamed.
Thin bamboo bones creak
as it strains for sky—
a sailboat chasing invisible tides.
I laugh, barefoot, skirt & hair whipping,
each tug of string a pulse returning—
old hands, yes,
but the girl is still flying.

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Reposted by Paul Connolly

Francis H Powell writer and poet @fhpowellwriter.bsky.social · 4h

@dragonslayerma.bsky.social
#promptcombo #simplepleasures

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Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom @janpsolivagant.bsky.social · 4h

🙏 @dragonslayerma.bsky.social as #PromptCombo host.
#SimplePleasures of #Solitude #daydreaming #solitaire #gitanes (I no longer smoke 😁)

#poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2008

#LeGrandMeaulnes #Sologne #EscapeRoom #Philemon #Baucis #Chateau #InnerLife

Lost Estate

La Sologne,
Sand-and-clay implacability, where
Maquisards,
Oblivious to time’s march, melt into a
Marsh-and-meadow melee.
Where hedgerow-cached
Portals open onto pingo-pond,
Sylvian dominions
Pooling the nameless, numberless Consolations of
Solitude.

Readers chanced upon a clearing here in
Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes
A century ago - its enigmatic
Lost Estate the tale’s symbolic pivot.

Mystery and transience of youth,
Doomed quest for a vanished world,
Now sequestered in a nondescript Chateau:
Museum-retreat fashioning a
Charmed, homespun niche amidst the
Upheavals of interwar France.

I see them with my mind’s eye, ninety Years on: ageless, reclusive
Philemon and Baucis, in whom Bukowski’s Gods still delight.

Game of solitaire arranged on the disused Billiard table in a shower of sun-gilded Motes, overseen by a tarnished
Suit of armour out of the foxed, Mildewed pages of some chapbook.

Unfinished letter, article, story or Manifesto lodged in the
Underwood typewriter, unsent to Minotaure, Pages Folles or Le Figaro -
Ashtray studded with Gitane stubs in Unfailing attendance.

Hunting trophies consigned to the boot Room, mounted askew or littering the Workbenches like decapitated
Dollies in some child’s dark, Mad Hatter Fantasy.

I hear the Lost Estate has begun hosting
An Escape Room that harbours
Twin torments for hermit souls:
Teamwork and claustrophobia.

Millennial-Zoomer masochism – gravity Of a dystopian coworking hub warping The space-time fabric of their inner life.

Imagination now a peer-driven,
Groundhog-Day litany of
“Check In,
Action This,
Get Aligned,
Circle Back.”

I recall a more spacious age, not long ago,
When I visited this nondescript chateau in An obscure corner of
France de l’intérieur.

© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2008

Staircase, hallway, open door, window admitting sunlight in a nondescript chateau in Central France.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2008
Beekeeping paraphernalia (?): white beekeeper's hat resting on one of two conical structures on the sill of a window admitting daylight.

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Reposted by Paul Connolly

David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · 5h

Many thanks, Fidel, @dragonslayerma.bsky.social for your enticing #PromptCombo #SimplePleasures. I'm sure I've posted this before but I think this bit of nostalgia fits the bill

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Julian (Hool) @hool415.bsky.social · 5h

Hullo @dragonslayerma.bsky.social Thanks for hosting #promptcombo #simplepleasures

Here’s a little bite of whimsy!

Simple Pleasures

I adore a channa dhansak, mushroom bahji, garlic naan…
mango chutney, onion salad
and well…
two to three poppadoms.
There is the sacrament, the indulgence
of eating one of them
when collecting-pilgrim
in my Saturday happiest car.
I imagine breaking down
but confessing to the R.A.C.
honestly chaps,
please feel free
to take your longest ever time.

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Stefano Carini @cieloceano.bsky.social · 5h

#promptcombo #SimplePleasures
#haiku
#mysticverse

A simple one for
@dragonslayerma.bsky.social

Forgiving nothing is
but flowers drawing visions—
the skies within.

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Reposted by Paul Connolly

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 6h

All are welcome to contribute. Please use hashtags #promptcombo #SimplePleasures and tag @dragonslayerma.bsky.social Fidel.
bsky.app/profile/drag...

Fidel Walsh @dragonslayerma.bsky.social · 6h

I'm your host for #PromptCombo this week(Monday to Friday) & the theme is #SimplePleasures . Share those small everyday joys!

Here's 1 I've rejigged to start us off

Tag me & use the hastags❤️

@victoriaspires.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social @hool415.bsky.social @rfsmith.bsky.social

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Reposted by Paul Connolly

Fidel Walsh @dragonslayerma.bsky.social · 6h

I'm your host for #PromptCombo this week(Monday to Friday) & the theme is #SimplePleasures . Share those small everyday joys!

Here's 1 I've rejigged to start us off

Tag me & use the hastags❤️

@victoriaspires.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social @hool415.bsky.social @rfsmith.bsky.social

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 3h

Years ago, as a learning discipline, I tried many rhymed forms, from couplet to canzone, exploring their virtues & pitfalls. As a result, while now I don’t set out to rhyme, it may ‘suggest’ itself in composition. If so, I’ll see where it takes me. I’ll listen to it & apply the lessons I’ve learned

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 3h

As with all poetry a key discipline is reading aloud. Habits & associations of the schoolroom are hard to shake, overlaying serious work with nursery rhyme tones. That stops happening when recitation becomes thoughtful. Equal feel in reading for sense & melody can test rhyme for soundness or vacuity

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