The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (or, at least, the first stanza thereof)

The Waste Land can be found pretty much everywhere online; Bartleby tends to be very good with formatting
 

the importance of knowledge to creating

 
This post has been added to the Hatter's Cabinet site via its Best of the Poetry Daily Critique page
 

Fired off a couple of posts rapid fire here. I wanted to get this one off before started on a essay project which might take some time.

 

I had an interesting thing happen this last Sunday. My daughter (who is 6) made mention of the cup and balls trick (without really knowing what it was), so I showed her Ricky Jay's performance of it on youtube (here). She found it an amazing feat of magic. (She knows it's a trick, but was dumbfounded by it.) So I also showed her a video of Ricky Jay demonstrating card control (this one). It flew right over her head. She did not at all understand what he was doing nor could she see the "magic tricks" he was performing.

The reason why is that she knows very little about cards. So the fact that he is shuffling away and yet the aces are magically right side up in the middle of the deck was beyond her. It was, very simply, an issue of knowledge: she did now that that would not normally happen. She did not know enough to see the event so she was blind to the event.

This is actually demonstration of a very important idea about the arts: to be able to see what an artist is doing you have to have knowledge about the medium. To say it another way: sophisticated artists/writers/musicians are creating for other sophisticated artists/writers/musicians, because those people are the people who will be able to perceive what they are doing in their respective mediums.

Another example: Martin Scorcese's version of Cape Fear.

"Confession" by Carrie Shipers (Verse Daily, 11/25/13), and "When Fruit and Flowers Hung Thick Falling" by Katie Peterson (Poetry Daily, 11/24/13)

"Confession" from Southern Review (Winter 2013)
poem found here
 

first lines:
I stopped calling for no reason because
you didn't always seem glad to hear from me.

 

"When Fruit and Flowers Hung Thick Falling" from The Accounts (U Chicago Press)
poem found here
 

first lines:
Never a gardener, she
became interested
 

the very important importance of lines

 

These two poems appeared on successive days at the end of November, and I started writing a long post on the day following. Unfortunately, between spending most of December fighting one illness or another and the chaos of the holidays (and I will be honest, I despise the time of year between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve), it pretty much sat on the burner: for so long, now, that I've mostly lost the energies behind the post.

Except for one point, which I have held on to and now finally sit down to write out.

These two poems are interesting in that they are both versions of a style of poem that you see not infrequently in poppoetry circles. (I should really start collecting and naming these pop-sub-genres . . . .) They are poems that are (1) built upon a list of statements (2) usually with an ironic and/or humorous bend, both in solo and in tandem; that (3) are intended to be read as lists of more-or-less equal elements; and (4) which have a concluding statement which serves to define the poem. That is a rather general (perhaps even inadequate) description of the sub-genre, and both of these poems vary from it in one way or another: though, not enough that they are not obviously trying to fit within this mold (or, perhaps I should say, "work out of" this mold?)

Originally I was going to parse the two poems primarily as regards the sub-genre, and work a little comparison and contrast to show how they are, in fact, quite generic, pop poems, but from that show the strengths and the weaknesses of each (and they do play well off each other in that the strengths of one tend to be the weaknesses of the other). In this abbreviated post, however, I will narrow myself to one item alone: lines.

"Nimium Minus Solus Quam Solus" by Daryl Hine -- Poetry Daily, 7/6/2013

from A Reliquary and Other Poems (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
poem found here

firstlines:

The days were delightful and the hours were light, Particularly when one was on one's own

 
I've been rather busy these days -- it's amazing how disruptive relatives can be (in all their varieties). The weather's also been a bit overhead. And, there's some other projects I'm needing to put away: like finishing reading Moby-Dick. So I'm going to be jumping back to a poem or two I passed by and still want to turn 'round and see again. For those of you anticipating the essay post on U.S. poetry culture, that project has suffered the most of the inconveniencing. But, soon enough it will come.

 

a bar for poetic ability?

There is much to be said for this poem, and I want to cover some points of it -- as is the norm, primarily in exploration. But the primary reason this poem has been in my head these last days is that it has been feeding energies brewing over the "Poetry Slam" essay (and the responses of myself and others), certain discussions, and questions of basic poetic competence. As such, directly or indirectly, the following points will be leading to this question: Is there a "bar" in poetry?

1 → Let's talk about the structure, and the use of a chorus -- here, having the fourth line of each stanza be (more or less) the same. Very under-used device, and not as easy a thing to use as you might think to pull off successfully. A chorus, by its repetition, creates a character of its own. But, for a successful poem, that character must yet be part of the character of the poem as a whole. It is very easy for there to be a kind of clash between the body of the stanzas and the chorus. The reason lies in that once the chorus is first written, the repetitions of the chorus write themselves. The poet errs when they then go about writing the non-chorus lines without integrating the repeated lines into the stanza (as though writing them, with each appearance, as though for the first time). That is to say, if a poet were writing a poem of the same form as this poem, they establish the choral line, and then go about writing lines 1-3, 5-7, 9-11, etc., when, what they need to be doing is to be still writing each stanza wholly: 1-4, 5-8, 9-12.

It's very easy to stop writing full stanzas and let the repeated lines wander off to do their own thing. Be careful of it. And notice how no such thing occurs here.

"Brief Study of Parades" by Jill Osier -- Verse Daily, 4/25/2013

from Pleiades (Winter, 2013)
poem found here

 

First lines:
1) There must be lifting.
2) There must be so many kinds of shoes.

 

sufficiency of content, and the organic whole

— reformatted 9/30/15

This poem is actually from a couple of weeks back. I wanted to make a comment on it then, but could not quite pin down what it was I wanted to do. But it kept bugging me, and out of nowhere, yesterday, it came to me: I was trying to be too specific, and needed only ask the basic question. So I'm jumping back in time . . . .

This is the question: Is the content of this poem sufficient to the organic whole of the poem?

I am not answering to either side; and, actually, it is that debate that has been going on in my head these past days. And, in the end, the question here is as important as whatever answer you might come up with. So, in a way, the point of this post is really, "Take a moment and consider this question, 'Is the content of this poem sufficient to the organic whole of the poem?,'" and use this poem as your sample text.

Now, to consider: What I am questioning is the relationship between the content of the poem and the poem's unity and self-identity. "Sufficient" does not necessarily mean quality. A poem's content can be sufficient to its making, and still not quite be a successful (or terribly sophisticated) poem. However, being insufficient would definitely mean the poem is unable to achieve what is possible for it to achieve: which is, from the writing standpoint, what is important. Not everything you write can be as good as you want it to be: but you should still be questioning: "Is this as good as it can be?"

It is there that sophistication develops. Not in the writing of a poem, but in seeking how to write the poem as well as it can be written.

So consider this poem, and consider the question: Is the content sufficient to this poem? Is is weakened because there is not enough? Is it weakened because there is a superfluidity of content? Is it the right amount, but its presentation weakens it?

And stop there -- important point, that. In exploring, you are not allowed to change the form. The experiment of this poem is to write a poem with this form, this systemic idea. So when considering content, you are considering how content works within this form, this idea, this presentation.

So explore with this poem. It is a great poem for this particular question -- after all, I have been doing it on and off for a couple of weeks now. But, always recognize, you should also be exploring the question.

"The Little Georgia Magnet" by R.T. Smith -- Poetry Daily, 3/10/13

from The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O'Connor (Louisiana Literature P)
poem found here
 

close reading and aesthetic sophistication

editing, and a little rewriting to try to fix some weaknesses -- 6/9/2013 (and Ogden Nash became Edward Lear, who was of whom I was thinking at the time, but came up with the wrong name)
— reformatted, minor editing 3/30/14
— this post has been added to the "Best of the PDC" page on my Hatter's Cabinet site.
 

This week I've had little opportunity for direct attention to this blog endeavor, so today I try to write out what has been brewing in my head.

Somehow -- actually, I know how* -- close reading has gotten a bad name in literature, when, in truth, every English major should be forced to take a class that is dedicated to the idea. Proof of the necessity of the class lies in that weakness of contemporary literature, of English departments, of poetry especially, but of creative writing cripplingly, is how great a many of the participants have never learned how to read. How to truly read: to pay attention to the words, to understand the consequences of the chosen semantics and syntactics, to see what is on the page, rather than, what is the majority case, to gloss through and see what is conventional, what is habitual, what they as readers have been told to see, what is easy.

When it comes to it, close reading is nothing more than learning to pay attention to the text. Which means, in no small part, learning about things like poetics, and narratology, and grammar (god forbid). But it also means learning to reject what has been said about a text and to see what is actually there for yourself.

One of the great jokes played upon the public based upon the inability of the public to read (and on that the public, rather, looks instead to convention to tell them what a text means) was the movie Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven. This film is a whole and unending play on the stereotypes and conventions that surround the 'hero' idea in film, particularly (but not exclusively) in the genre of war films. And the audience is magnificently manipulated as they bite on the hook of every convention, to the point of (in the two times I saw it in the theater) the audience cheering quite loudly at the appropriate moment of victory at the end.

Except that they are cheering for the bad guys. The humans in this film are a future version of the Nazis: if you but pay the slightest attention, that identification is put forward again and again and again. There is no doubt to be had: they are the equivalent of the Nazis. They are the self-acclaimed Aryans destroying an inferior race, simply because it is their destiny — their moral right, as it were — to do so. And when the audience cheered at Nazi victory, I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Simply, close reading is paying attention. More complexly, close reading is reading, is looking for oneself at the words on the page, seeing what those words make of themselves, ignoring conventions (or, recognizing that they are conventions), genre, the social layers plastered on the text (which is to say, ignoring any statement that begins with "what this means is"), and experiencing the text for oneself.

Now, where an aesthetic concept of close reading breaks from the, say, formalist, or New Criticism (U.S. style) idea of the concept (i.e., as it has concreted over time), is that the aesthetic recognizes that New Critical close reading has itself become rather convention laden — which is the exact opposite of the aesthetic want of those writers from out of whose works the idea of close reading developed. As such, an aesthetic close reader will beware of, pay attention to, and then ignore any conventions and genres that actually developed within close reading itself: for example, the idea that the more technical the text, the better; or, perhaps a better way to say it, the more the poem offers to close reading the better. Another such convention is the idea that great literature must be based on irony. Another, that great literature must have a specific psychological, moral, and/or emotional depth. Each idea does carry some true observation about literature, yes; but, once that idea has been turned into a rule, it fails literature.

An aesthetic approach to the idea of close reading will recognize that different readers — and different writers — will approach a poem with a different degree and nature of sophistication. Thus, a less sophisticated person will have difficulty entering a text of both high sophistication and high complexity. That does not make the text bad, in any way; nor does it make the response of the less sophisticated reader invalid; rather, it merely forces you to stay aware to the fact that all texts are not created equal, to wit, and nor are all readers, and to think otherwise leads only to falsities and confusions. Every reader approaches a text from out their own knowledge and sophistication. What close reading demands is not that hey get it "correct," but that what they get, they get on their own. That they engage, think about, and study the words and semantics and metaphor and structure on their own, with effort sufficient to the task. (Indeed, the very idea of a "correct" reading is counter to aesthetic close reading.)

But, this does not relieve the writer from the burdens of successful creating. A text, whatever the degree of complexity, whether it be Edward Lear or E.E. Cummings, must still be a successful text. Which is why we can equate Lear and Cummings as poets in the issues of creating successful works: Lear's poems may be much more accessible than Cummings's, but they both are still of a high degree of poetic sophistication.

Which is to say, there is a bar in writing. Or at least there should be. At least as far as publication — and critical approval — is concerned. A poem must succeed in what it is trying to do. And, there must be a certain degree of sophistication in the poem: and that degree of sophistication might most easily be described as being able to hold up against attentive reading.

You can not wave away the effects of the implied author of your text simply by claiming ignorance. If a close reading reveals your text to, say, have racist undertones, you can not simply wave it off by saying "well, I don't mean for someone to read the story that carefully." That is tantamount to saying, "I only write for idiots." (And if that is how you make your buck, go crazy. There are plenty of willing idiots out there. But do not then claim any quality for your work.) You cannot throw together a poem with lines that form no obvious purpose and defend the lines with "You are not supposed to make anything out of the lines," because a good reader will, that is what being a good reader is: it is saying, to every poem, "there are line breaks here, what is their purpose? what is their effect?" You can not write lines that form no coherent unity in the expectation that the reader of the poem will only surface read: that is nothing more than writing crap and hoping nobody notices.

But not only that, it is the absolute defeat of the idea of poetry, and literature, and any art form as a creative endeavor. A writer should always be striving to write beyond what they had written before, should always be striving to develop in sophistication. Not to do so is not being creative, it is being repetitive, or, worse, diaretic. To strive to write literature is to strive to be brilliant, which is to say to accomplish what, at the start of it, you could not before accomplish. It is to make something beautiful. It is to write by the philosophy "I strive to make brilliant things, and I want my readers to strive to be brilliant readers; and in that I write brilliantly I push them to read brilliantly, and in that they read brilliantly, they push me to write brilliantly."

Of course, not every piece can be a magnum opus, nor should they be. But every new collection should surpass the previous (i.e., should demonstrate a development in sophistication, even if it is, in the least, exploration of new areas). If not — I'll be honest — I don't, won't have much care for your work. And the lack of strive will show in each individual work: it absolutely does, do not deceive yourself. There is a difference between poetry that is written and poetry that is created — though, there does seem to be a relationship wherein the less sophisticated the poet, the more they are blind to the difference. I would argue it is most often that very lack of striving — of close reading while writing — that blinds them.

Writing is supposed to be very hard work. If it is not, you are wasting your time as well as mine. If you want to write whatevers, knock yourself out. Just don't submit them . . . to anything. When you put a poem out to be published, it should not be merely with the thought: I wrote something, hopefully you'll publish it. Rather, it should carry with it an implied declaration: I accomplished something here; it is worth publishing. And its quality should meet, if not exceed, that declaration.

•
That said, I offer these questions about today's poem. And the above is not meant to be directed critique against today's poem, it is merely broad background strokes, both for this post and for all posts here. And, in turn, these are merely questions intended to give you something to think about. If I write them with a critical tone, it is merely to give point to the prod.

In no particular order:

1. Why have the words gee and haw in italics? They are words, after all, no more or less than the press or sweat that precedes or follows. 
2. Assuming there is no valid reason for the italics, what is the consequence of the italics to the reading and reception of the poem?
3. (Are they even used correctly? supposing they were not, what is the result to the reading and reception of the poem?)
4. Near the bottom of the second stanza there are these lines:

   an inch. Furthermore, in a chair, she could not be raised. She had a power so much deeper than the naked eye can gaze. Magic or leverage,

   The two sentences beginning with "Furthermore" are, actually, on their own, a rhymed ballad stanza:

   Furthermore, in a chair, she could not be raised. She had a power so much deeper than the naked eye can gaze.

   (Yes, the second line is not the best as far as a ballad stanza goes, I know. But you get my point.) Though, there is no apparent use of it, or even awareness of it. In fact, the poem, as far as meter and rhythm go, is paying attention only to the visual length of the lines. What is the effect on the reading and reception of a poem that is free verse that has in its midst, apparently without the author realizing it, a rhymed ballad stanza?
5. Finally, on that note, since the poem is sentences broken into lines, and, apparently, the primary consideration as to the line breaks is the visual length of the lines, why not simply write it as paragraphs and shrink in the margins? What is the effect on the reading and reception of a poem when, to all intents and purposes, it made up, simply enough, of paragraphs with left-justification and narrow margins?
6. And, what would be the result to the reading and reception of the poem when, once attention is paid to the sentences that make up the poem, it realized they may not make such great paragraphs after all? To rephrase it, can arbitrary line breaks save a bad paragraph?

 

* The answer is: because close reading is an undefeatable threat to the majority of what falls for social criticism (and bibliography-as-criticism). As social critics rose, especially within the realm of post-colonialism and all is associates, they kept finding themselves being faced with the point of the simple sword of "except, if you pay attention to the text." Now, I am not using this as a blanket statement against social criticism: in fact, the difference between really good social criticism and run of the mill criticism (and that distinction is not to be confused with popularity of the critic) is, in fact, that very issue: whether the text can sustain the criticism. Unfortunately, post-colonial criticism and social criticism is really easy to write — and build a career upon — if one ignores the text and goes, instead, for grandiose, pc, socially 'enlightened' emotions about the oppressed state of, well, the oppressed. (If you wish one example, I offer Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives by Marianna Turgovnick, a lauded book by an established cultural critic that at nearly every turn fails against "except, if you pay attention to the text . . . .")

"Ars Poetica" by Natania Rosenfeld -- Poetry Daily, 2/19/13

from The Gettysburg Review (Spring 2013)
poem found here
 

first lines:
"Peace," says the soprano,
retired to the sea, "is the tide
 

free verse and the poetic ear (and grammar)

— reformatted, some editing 12/10/2013
— This post has been added to the "Best of the PDC" page on my Hatter's Cabinet site.
 

Note after the fact: I wrote this still early on in finding my sea legs. I rather don't like the tone because it is ambiguous as to whether I am speaking of the poet or the poem -- and I generally want to speak of the latter more than the former. Most definitely, the end of the stanza is terrible. But the cause behind the problem I wanted to leave open, and merely posit ideas to ponder. There is benefit to exploring the question of whether a poet is writing above or below their ability: a question I believe one should always be asking oneself. (Also made a couple of text corrections.) -- April 16, 2013
 

I'll begin in grammar . . . for in that the commas in lines 4 and 5 break so far from basic grammar, and because the syntax and the grammar, both before and after, are conventional, those commas are wrong. Incorrect.

Now, normally, I try to avoid using words in the domain of incorrect  -- terms that are of the modality of yes/no -- when talking about literature. I try to stay in the realm of sophistication and validity -- terms that reside in discourse and function only as and towards discourse, rather than truth. But there are time when, flatly, something is incorrect. Here, because

1. it involves grammar, which is not wholly manipulatable, being part of the medium of the work (specifically, here, the English language);
2. the work establishes itself within fairly conventional grammar; which is also to say, the work does not make effort to establish variations in conventional grammar;
3. the break from conventional grammar is severe.

As a sophisticated reader, there are two consequences. First, the reading is greatly disrupted. The lines are as clumsy as a drunk, bow-legged ox on platform shoes. Second, more importantly, I am left with the impression that either (1) the poet doesn't know how to use a semi-colon; or (2) the poet doesn't have a developed enough ear to hear the problem for themselves; or (3) the poet has an attitude toward their art that permits such laxity and apathy that they don't feel the need or obligation to learn their medium, or the need or obligation to give the degree of attention to their art to eliminate such problems. Whichever the reason, it makes the poem something not worth reading (or, greatly less worth reading), and diminishes the interest in the poem's maker. (Which is not a good thing.)

Of course, I could try to say it more simply by saying the writer of such a work is not terribly sophisticated (which is not the same as saying that the work does not show great sophistication, which is true); except that saying such eliminates an important distinction: there is a difference between a person whose work is unsophisticated but still at the level of the poet (or, hopefully, at the level of the poet striving to be better then where they are) and a person who is not bothering, who uses reasons and rationales (or a fundamental apathy) to permit a lackadaisical method and style. Which is why people like me condemn the permissibility in creative writing instruction of free verse: a poet has to develop their ear and ability through formal verse. I will give two general (and associated) reasons:

• First, it is harder to hear elegance, fluidity, control, in free verse than it is in formal verse (or, in reverse, it is easier to develop your poetic ear through formal verse).
• Second, it is far easier to develop bad habits -- and rationales for inattentiveness -- through free verse. (I should say, I have known many instances of such rationales being propagated through workshops and formal classes.)
• (If you need a more formal reason, then I point you again to Gombrich and his Art and Illusion, to the idea that an artist develops through education through schema, and learns in sophistication to break from schema.)

To sum (and we have been for a while wholly in the general): there is no excuse to not know your medium-language; there is no excuse for getting grammar wrong (which is to say, there is no excuse to not being proficient in grammar, and well-equipped in syntax); and, once again, such errors come off to sophisticated readers wholly to the disfavor of the poet. Always.

Which brings me once again to the question of publication: the editor in this case failed their journal, pure and simple. There is sophistication also in editorship, and, unlike the poem, which speaks only of itself, in terms of editorship such lack of attention speaks to the whole of the publication.

 
•

An aside: I toy every once in a while with this question: "is it possible to tell from reading a poem whether the poet is of a lesser sophistication and trying something difficult to them, or whether the poet is simply not trying very hard." Given a large enough sample I think the usual case is yes. On a smaller sample, however, I flip flop. Sometimes it is obvious, as when errors are obviously mistakes (seen in comparison to the rest of the poem), or when the the nature of the attempted work speaks of exploration beyond the poet's current ability. Sometimes it is not so obvious. I am not sure what you can take home with this other than awareness of the question, which I think is more important than you might at first realize. And there you go.

"Nostalgia™" by Robert Hershon -- Poetry Daily, 2/8/13

from Goldfish and Rose (Hanging Loose Press)
poem found here
 

first lines:
At Uncle Li's
Golden Lotus New
 

the poetic ear (and line breaks)

— edited 5/23/13
— reformatted, minor edits 12/10/2013
— This post has been added to the "Best of the PDC" page on my Hatter's Cabinet site.
 

Good fortune that this poem follows behind "Geckos in Obscure Light," two days ago, and my comment about punchline poems, which I can now amend: there is nothing wrong with punchlines in a poem, if you are telling a joke.

Nothing to complain about with this little poem. The rhythm of the last three lines of the first stanza feels a little off to me with the present line endings -- I've spent a few minutes now exploring alternatives. But that's for discussion about rhythms and sound and line endings, a discussion that usually comes to a positive net result (and inevitable between poets with sensitive ears). Love the break up of the opening lines and continue to all the way up to those last three.

And then there is that line break after the "to" in the middle of the second stanza. Which wholly works, because the break is to a purpose that is natural to and an inherent extension of the poem: something nice to see what with my having seen so many poets justify their ending a line with a preposition with pedantic mantras taught them at their workshops and MFAs, yet who are utterly oblivious to a fundamental critique: it sounds terrible. That is, unless that awkwardness of sound is, as here, being put to a purpose.

Let's propose a couple natural laws, to wit, of poetic sound:

• There is no excuse for not developing your poetic ear (which includes not just sound but rhythm).
• There is no substitute for developing your poetic ear.
• The poetic ear is essential to poetic sophistication (insofar as there is any aural aspect to the poet's work).
• The sophisticated, developed poetic ear always trumps a poetic technique or rule (which means realizing workshop/MFA taught technique is ersatz poetics and little more -- read Gombrich's Art and Illusion, especially as concerns schema).
• Line breaks are unavoidably part of the aural experience of a poem. When they are not, it is with poems that are little more than paragraphs with close margins, left justified. And such poems may technically be poems, but they are nearly invariably not that terribly much of a poem, and are, thus, mostly disposable. (If not ignorable.)
• Ergo, a poet must pay attention to the aural aspects of line breaks.

Yes, Virginia, there is talent necessary to poetic sophistication, just as with everything else in the world. And if A.E. Housman says your line break is clumsy, shove your workshop wisdom deep in your pocket and read and read and more importantly study and study (perhaps I should say sing and sing?) until you can hear that clumsiness too. There's a lot to learn about line endings in comparing this poem with less successful (or flat bad) poems. I recommend the effort.

 
•

I could also talk about the ideation, and want to. This little joke-poem (I mean that in the good sense) would make for a great class discussion about literary ideation (and how not to screw it up). But enough for one post, except to say I laughed. Out loud.

"The Evil Key" by Sinéad Morrissey -- Poetry Daily, 2/4/13

from Poetry Ireland Review (Dec. 2012)
poem found here
 

first lines:
In woods and lakes, car boots, freezers, huts,
in ministers' apartments where their flailing last
 

examining examining a poem

-- minor edits 6/30/13
-- reformatted, with more minor edits 11/24/2013
This post has been added to the "Best of the PDC" page on my Hatter's Cabinet site.
 

An observation: the more sophisticated an artist is, the more idiosyncratic their work tends to be. The less sophisticated, the more generic. This is not wholly reversible: I do not know if I would be willing to say that idiosyncracy is necessarily a sign of aesthetic sophistication. Ed Wood was pretty idiosyncratic, after all -- though I would be willing to consider that such like he are the exceptions that prove the rule.

(Keep in mind, the generic is the opposite of the aesthetic: the former is convention driven, the latter is about individual experience/engagement.)

There are, loosely speaking, two paths to examining a poem. One is to explore it generally, through the lens of general poetics and the aesthetic. The other is to examine it more individually, through the lens of a writer reading the poem. The more sophisticated that reading writer, the more they tend to talk about poems from the point of view of "how would I have done this; how could I do it better?" While back on the general side, the question is more "how do I experience this poem to its fullest; what is it teaching me about aesthetic experience?"

From this comes two things. First, the more sophisticated is the reader, the less interest they will have in less sophisticated literature. It has nothing to offer them. Especially so with the aesthetic writer, who is always on the lookout for something to amaze them, something that will make their own work better -- either through demonstration/instruction ("what can I learn from this?), or through direct challenge ("dammit, I could do better than that").

(Note, though, do not confuse, there, the writer reading for experience and the writer talking about a poem, though those two ideas do overlap.)

Second, you have to watch the words of a more sophisticated reading writer: are they talking about general poetics, or are they talking to (I say "to" not "out of") their own aesthetic vision? Both can be instructive to other readers; but, the latter threatens confusion if you try to make generalizations out of it.

Saying that, I am unsure to what degree my response to today's poem is talking about general aesthetics or about my own poetic perception. Specifically, I am speaking about line structure. Now, off the top, I will say I have an allergy to poems that are sentences broken up into lines. The exceeding majority of the time such an approach reveals nothing except that the writer of the poem has no ear whatsoever for the poetic line. They have never developed an ear for rhythm, sound, rhyme, anything. In a way, such poems have become a kind of genre of poetry -- but it is a genre of dismissiveness rather than convention. That is to say, the governing convention is "the actual purpose of a poetic line is irrelevant, and can be ignored." Of course, the source and basis of this genre is laziness -- if any old line can be accepted within the genre, then "poetry," as such, becomes a fairly easy enterprise, and the writer can concern themselves with diarrhetically (diaretically) documenting the emotions they felt when their puppy died.

But, then, that is not really poetry. The whole point of poetry -- in fact, the whole point of any art aesthetically approached -- is the manipulation of the medium to the end of experience.

So poems like "The Evil Key" can be for me irritating little buggers. The first six lines begin a wonderful excursion into iambic pentameter -- except, I might say, for an aural stumble at "the LAKE, CAR boots." Sometimes I can read it smoothly; most of the time, it reads like a sudden -- and jarring -- reversal from iambs to trochees. But, otherwise, I love the sound: the occasional alliteration; the flow and play of vowels (notice lines 2 and 3, where two lines of rather subdued vowels both end with an upturn to slant-rhymed 'a's -- love it); the excellent "last"; the lightly manipulated syntax; the varied words -- but controlled words -- that gives both energy and expansion to the opening ideation.

But then line 7, and an extra foot. Here is what is absolutely a near universal rule of poetics: don't start something and not keep it up. You readers who do not have an ear will not notice such; but, your more sophisticated readers will notice the change. And to them it sounds like the writer lost control -- or abandoned control, or never really had control to begin with. Think of it this way: I am reading it, and I am thinking, "ooh, she's actually trying something with a little difficulty and calculation"; but, then, line seven and following, and what resides in my reading experience is disappointment. A big, "oh, never mind; this poem is just more of the same old same old, only a slightly more interesting at the start."

And this poem does rather decay from that point. Rhythm and line control laxen greatly. It gets sloppy in its sound: "Eurovision Song Contest" is a rather ugly phrase. "Denmark and Sweden's" is the exact opposite of the ideational lists in the opening, falling to basic factual statement. (Not to mention grammatically incorrect: the phrase is saying the whole of Denmark and the cleverest women of Sweden are on the way. It should be "Denmark's and Sweden's" -- but, then, do you notice how the phrase becomes even less ideational and more factual sounding? Something to ponder.)

And yet,

and wired as no man with them ever is to sense, without exactly evidence, where corpses have been left

is wonderful. But then the lines following about flats and shafts are themselves rather flat, and banal. And F# is a very interesting insertion -- but I don't find it brought in deftly at all.

So you see my irritation. And perhaps you see how in re-reading the poem what I would be doing, primarily, would no longer be experiencing the poem as is, but looking at it for how I would make it better, do it better. Create something better. (Especially with the F# -- "it will invert anything" is too good an idea to permit half-handed use, too energy filled an idea to be a minor player.)

I find it endlessly curious how many poems I read that start off strong but lose control. It is often said -- and truly -- that the hardest parts of any literary work is the ending. Perhaps the second hardest part is everything else beyond the beginning. It speaks to the degree the writer is creating ideational unity, the microcosmos of the aesthetic work. I actually have much to say with that, but that's for another time.