“as if” to me is an abomination in poetry.
That's not my problem.
Either make it happen or don’t make it happen,
He does make it happen, for me.
but to say, “as if” is illogical, redundant and language-archaic, like the double negative.
Your arbitrary and irrational pet peeves do not count as flaws in masterful poetry.
Shakespeare, Frost, and recent poets
And all poets writing in the English language
have used ‘as if’,
Yes... think about that.
but they shouldn’t, and if they thought about it, they wouldn’t.
Uh-huh.
And then comes ‘somehow’ and then ‘were’ The poet somehow offers ‘somehow’ as part of the poem. Could ‘sort of’ be used as well?
No, it could not. Jane is not looking at the skirt as if it is "sort of" disgraced, but as if it and not herself were the thing disgraced, as if it could somehow be disgraced, as if an inanimate object could possess moral character or volition.
Doesn’t ‘the dress is disgraced’ work?
No, it does not. The dress is not disgraced, Jane is disgraced, in her mind.
The entire sentence is filler for the word ‘disgraced’,
No, it is not. Here is how you want DJ to have written his poem.
Jane looks down at her organdy skirt,
the dress is disgraced
on the floor, in the dirt
Justice doesn't want to say that the dress is disgraced but that she thinks it's disgraced and can be disgraced. Doing it your way he comes off as if he, the author, actually believes this (that the dress is disgraced) ---unless you want to give DJ a lesson on how to write irony.
and then to add insult to injury, ‘for being there.’
Insult to injury? Fine way to show appreciation for a work of art; even this early apprentice work deserves better.
Now look:
Jane looks down at her organdy skirt
Why "organdy"? Because organdy is transparent, honest, if you will, about what it "hides". Justice is about to make a character sketch. What do we know about Jane? She wears an organdy skirt. Her skirt is transparent. She thinks pulling down her skirt is disgraceful.
as if it somehow were the thing disgraced
for being there,
This is part of what we need to know about Jane's attitude; she thinks it is a disgrace to be there in the first place, to have gone to Bertram and the garden.
on the floor,
She thinks it is a disgrace for her dress to be on the floor, rather than, say, hanging over the back of a chair or on a hanger.
in the dirt,
Not only did she go to Bertram, not only was she so excited that her dress wound up on the floor, but she didn't even possess enough self-control to find a grassy place to strip and offer herself---it's in the dirt. Pure, unbridled animal lust, regarding which she doesn't understand that it isn't disgraceful, but perfectly natural, normal. It's no wonder Bertram is asleep and cool, rather than wide-awake and hot. No wonder he toyed with her. Bertram is as self-concealing as a bronze statue, in other words, not.
Instead of admitting to herself what normal lusts she has, she sets about putting her attire back in order, remaking, rebuilding her exterior show of propriety.
Then comes three sentences with ‘it, it, it,’ which is so obvious for the rhyme.
What? Do you want him to say "the dress" three times, as if you wouldn't complain about that? That's what writers do when they don't want to repeat the thing they're referring to.
I know this ‘style’ of writing can be called ‘plain’ style, but typically the writing matches the consciousness of the message. “naked to the naked moon’ is a chain-jerker, obtuse, guessed-at imagery. Well, gosh, it must mean something.
This is baffling. What do you mean, "it must mean something"? It does mean something. After my explication of the first stanza, does it still remain obtuse that at the end of the poem Justice is talking about Jane finally being naked? He spends the whole first stanza talking about how once she was only naked on the exterior, and how she felt about that, dirty (in the D. H. Lawrence sense)---is the ending so strange? Even if I'm mistaken in my explication, to end with "naked" after what the poem deals with, doesn't seem so unexpected.
Soon the twilight of life and love will bring the same effect to the lily, the bleeding-heart and the rose--- whichever you are (in a Joycian language of flowers sense). The god of Love won't see you or hear you or your prospective loves. Love itself will be defaced in the mind like a statue of Cupid with the nose broken off.
Naked to---not under---the naked moon. She will be seen naked by something that is naked. "Naked moon"--- The moon is not obscured by clouds but the full force of the moon's power is in effect, in regard to romance and more-than-mortal honest being. Justice refers to both death and sex in the lying down with others.
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