Victoria,
You said: If I understand correctly, it seems to me that your primary objection comes down to the use of particle-heavy syntax to produce cadence.
No, I don't think I mean anything like that. There are mostly common writerly concoctions used, like this:
At rest on a stair landing, They feel it moving Beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle.
The line above is mediocrity to the max. It does not in any way construct anything, it motions with cliche. Do you see the "they feel it moving"? When you really put your full entire mind and body against the line, there isn't anything there. And what is "it"? It is the moment when you are supposed to buy into some meaning, like, um, death.
So what is here is a death poem without saying the word death. Death poems are important, but usually only if they offer something. "Tragedies" are to be uplifting, not simply downers.
Alicia,
I see the word mortgage and its effect. But I say that this is writing with the head and not the heart. If one took out the subject of ominous death, there is nothing there in the poem. An example of this is to imagine a painting by Van Gogh, which can be very interesting to many people as we know. Some of the paintings are nothing but a bunch of flowers in a vase, sunflowers and so forth. So it is the sensuous inflectives, the passionate intimacies, imagination and newness that somehow interests the viewer. Another painter, a Sunday painter perhaps, paints the same flowers, and, nothing. So I read Justice as a Sunday sketcher with a touch of Nihilism. In this case, the plain style is short shrift, and easy to mimic. It's everywhere. Here is from todays Poetry.com.
"Oh for logs in the fireplace and a winter storm,
some said. Oh for Scotch and a sitcom, said others.
Daylight concealed, but only for those
fond of the enormous puzzle, and night rose up
earth to sky, pagan and unknowable.
How we saw it was how it was." --Stephen Dunn
Here is more dependance on that interminable "it"! (Of
course the word 'it' is needed, I need it all the time,
but not to try make poetry depend on it. Using it like this is soooo common, no wonder people aren't interested in reading poetry. The word 'it' is used so often because people write with their heads--they're actually thinking in a left-brained manner. Isn't it science that Van Gogh is right-brained?
Now who said poetry is what you feel about what you think, not what you think about what you feel? The study of science is intrinsic to writing poetry. Now I really should get orderly and structure an essay.
One start. Most know about the difference between introvert and extrovert. It is a personality mind-set, neither right or wrong. Some like big gatherings of people and some don't, etc. The football guy yelling in the stadium for his team is the extrovert, right? To make a long story short, Jung started out with the terms the exact opposite. What he actually meant was that the extrovert was the one who looked out-at others, to be close, and the introvert was the football guy. (just for examples sake) some psych people may know this bit of history.
Poetry is written the same way, left-brained and right-brained.
Everything you know and feel is to be applied to every word you structure into a line of poetry.
Just a partial ramble.
TJ
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