[Barbara Baig]

Just to give you one more opinion here, Marshall, I'm with Carl on this one.

Something, I think, depends on your intended audience for the poem. Roger says, "When I read a poem (or when anyone does, for that matter) my mind immediately goes into the mode of actively trying to detect metaphors or greater meaning." That's the response of a poet-critic.

But, with all respect to Roger, everyone does not read a poem that way. Some of us prefer to surrender to the words and images and music and discover the meaning of the poem that way.

I'm not saying one of these approaches is better than the other; but they are very different.

Barbara