I guess I feel like the Devil's Advocate on this thread.
The problem I have with the diction of the "Balance" is it feels so imposed. For me, that narrator's POV throws the whole poem out of balance. These Greek and Latinate words, because they are in such stark contrast to the Black English of the characters, just creates a kind of cognitive dissonance for me that renders me unable to get past the diction: diadem, for instance, stopped the entire poem for me in its tracks. But I think that raises an interesting issue: how far apart in diction and education can a narrator be from the characters in a piece of narrative poetry?
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