“Oh” does need a comma, but the reason you’ve left it without may be that it’s masquerading as the vocative “O.” I know you’ve gone round and round with this, but “Oh” is a puff of some emotion or other—“Alas” or “Wow” or “Now I get it”—while “O” means “I’m talking to you, window.” When I read it, I get the latter meaning, no matter how you spell it, so (pace the anti-archaists) I still vote for “O” with no “h” and no comma.

I like your move away from the Gothic in S3L2, but I’m with Jim on “dilapidated.” It may be telly, as Sam suggests, but to my ear it paints a picture by sounding dilapidated. It’s also touchingly homely, like an aging friend—all of which is lost with the “illusionary” veer into metaphysics. One also wonders what the illusion is. The window tells the truth; it’s just a limited truth and a different truth each time. You’d need more than that to drive home the point that none of these scenes in itself “embodies the essence of reality.” (Buddhists would say the illusion is in thinking there is such an essence, but that’s neither here nor there.) I’d leave the “metaphysical underlayer” where it was.

Before I reply to the latest comments on this, I just want to say that I wish I could have been keeping up better with commenting on the other recent posts lately. I hate looking like I've got an egocentric, monomaniacal focus on this one, but the truth is I've been grappling with some serious health problems and have had to make a concerted effort even to keep up with this thread. Thanks for your forbearance; I realize it doesn't look like the best etiquette and it's not my ideal model of Eratosphere participation.

Sam, okay about PF. I guess I disagree with you that they should be avoided categorically in contemporary poetry, and I also think it’s probably extreme to insist that a poem always “show” rather than “tell.”

Glenn, thanks for stopping by, and I’m happy that you’ve quietly been taking stock of this poem all along. I’m excited that you think I’ve strengthened the poem over time. As to my reintroduction of the “oh” without a comma following it this time, I had found this guidance from the Chicago Manual of Style:

I had hoped that “oh weeping window” might classify as a phrase and thus not require a comma, but I suppose, based on your and Carl's feedback, that by "phrase," CMS means a commonly used one.

I’m interested to hear that you like “illusionary,” and to hear your reasoning for that. (I hadn’t considered the “dilapidated” etymology.) I really feel torn between these two words, given the divergent feedback I’ve gotten on them.

Oh, wow, I’m really excited that you got the second and third possibilities! I had wanted to convey these and more, but I had scarcely hoped that my sparse presentation could actually succeed in doing that.

Carl, about “oh,” see my comment to Glenn, above. It’s really not that big a deal, but

it’s true that this was part of my desired meaning and that that had something to do with my preference for dropping the comma—this presentation seems more like a compromise between “oh” and “o.” Although “o” technically means only what you say it does, to me it also carries a sense of “a puff of some emotion,” otherwise one could easily just omit it and simply present the identity of the addressee, right?

Maybe it depends in part on where each reader is coming from, since Glenn seemed to get it. I’m as moved by your (and Jim’s) advocacy for “dilapidated” as I am by Sam’s and Glenn’s against it. This may just be another case in which I need to write two different versions of the poem to suit different constituencies (actually four versions, to also settle the “o”/”oh” controversy).

I’d wondered about your new style of participation, Alexandra, though there’s nothing wrong with it—just different. I’ve had setbacks in recent months as well—healthwise and everyotherwise. I hope you’ll be advancing on all fronts soon.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but this article backs you all the way: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/...happened-to-o/.