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Hi Don Two ,I found your writing because we both won the Writer's Cramp in a tie a month or so ago. Hopefully this review will find you in good spirit.

On Title/Subject
This side of Paradise is a very good title on this subject. I think it is irony? Anyway that's how I interpreted it and I loved it. Dealing with the heat is a good sub line, it explains it all.

General impressions
WOW, what a marvelous beautiful prose poem. You blew me away. Because of this I am going to nominate you for the Blown Away Contest "Invalid Item"  where you can put writing that you think is sooo good. I was totally blown away by this poem.

Favorite Parts
It was a time of exceptionally warm
temperatures, more-so than even for my
Saharan tastes, yet I got through it, and I
prevailed, and I was even a king of sorts
with summer court and crown all right.
A kingdom of prevail in heat, oppressive
dew point, close the atmosphere of late
July, a sun strong-arming scorpions even.
Oh, I would mole the summer underground
and seek the cool of cavern slate, I’d
wet the high of August Sol employing
hose for welcome shower spritz...
I’d lie, sigh spent, on satin sheets,
a thin of sweat before a fan
beseeching midnight dewy air
to swirl through screen
and oust the warm
of lingering oppression,
that pent-up air intent
with closing in on one hundred.
Whence the mercury would rise,
and me, one lanky mass of middle age
with blackened heels from stepping long,
that short-term memory of cool from dew
on tawny lawn so adept to lathe my feet
as summer often must. Regarding yours
so humbly poised upon this climate throne
to idle by till winter frosted panes extant,
till November winds encouraged
goose bumps to form.

And adding to it all was a vent-less
room, a corner filled with musty books
of verse from poets long ago, those classics
reaching throughout time...and in said room
the fist of heat clutched me by the throat.
Still I resisted and browsed on, with Keats,
Shakespeare, Service, Guest and even Milton,
wherein the Devil was cast out.

I exited, with books in hand--it was
Paradise Lost, it was paradise gained.

It remembered me of John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. I kid you not, it is that good! I loved your internal rhyme and your writing style, swift paced and a beauty of a poem. A gem!

Final thoughts
The most beautiful prose poem I came across so far since I've joined Writing Dot Com, two and a half months ago. I am lost for words. Thank you so much for sharing.

Keep up the good work, enjoy writing!

WakeUpAndLive

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