Reply #9: Hmm.

[Orrex]

Oh, I don't know.

Imagine that you're listening to someone telling a joke. You like his tone of voice, and his body language, and you find the structure of the joke to be appealing, but when the punchline comes, you're the only one not laughing.

That's me--when the poem's over, I'm more often than not left there saying "huh?"

I like Wilfred Owen a great deal, and James Weldon Johnson really moves me (though neither of them are old old). Shakespeare, of course, along with a number of his contemporaries.

But I read a lot of pre-Ren lit in college, and honestly a good deal of Old English stuff truly knocks my socks off.

I think that the structure and word choices (and interplays thereof) are what I really like, when I like a poem. But it always feels like my fondness for (or dislike of) a poem is kind of superficial.

Like only laughing because you heard everyone else laugh...


When I read fiction for critique, I can pretty readily say when something is or isn't effective (Just this or that in the work disgusts me/Here it misses or there exceeds the mark. (Ha ha)). But with poetry, I have no such knack.