Notes on "TO MARIA JUDITH MOLINARI" by Salvador Or

[Catherine Edmunds]

I'll stick to pure grammar here.

First stanza, line 1, 'Will you accept my excuses?' might be better than 'Would'. More immediate. Always a good idea to simplify tenses in poetry as far as possible.

Line 5 needs a comma after 'appeared'.

Line 10, delete 'do'.

Line 11, replace the end of line comma with a semi-colon.

Line 12, consider replacing the comma with a dash. Replace 'second-rated' with 'second rate'.

Line 15, change word order to: 'and in some foreign countries'

Last line, suggested change: 'that speak in tongues, not mine...'

Stanza two, line 2, 'already', not 'alredy'.

Line 6, 'knocked' would be more idiomatically correct than 'punched'.

Stanza three, line 3, I'd drop the comma after 'and'.

Line 6, I'd consider dropping the 'And' at the start of this line, as you have loads of 'and's in this stanza, and might want to lose a few of them.

Line 9 needs a comma after 'face'.

Line 10, last word needs to be 'differently' (adj rather than adv).

Last line maybe consider 'and opening a road for me through all my life' rather than 'to' all my life.



The poem itself, especially in the context of the preamble, is, of course, brilliant.