This critic’s fire burns himself
Even as it entertains me.
Let me admit I love
(And maybe it offends you)
What I am too cowardly to do:
Undoing with wit someone’s wit
Having the audacity to sit in a poem,
A dry poem, offered up to one, in flames,
Trained to match all the poems to all the names
Without faces. Wit has a chance to be unkind
In criticism felt only by the mind.
But this is how I want my poetry
To be eaten—with less respect than lamb.
Let poems be torn limb from limb,
A lady of crowe ransom propped and prim
Or the poem which doesn’t respect itself at all.
He’ll show it respect, a critic who owns no circle,
The critic the eagle where below we crawl.
His judgment like atoms—invisible, not small.
But what does he love?
There’s the rub. Old Robert Lowell? We don’t know.
Judgment is the shadow
And love is the sun.
He strikes fear in everyone.
But he should not.
We didn’t wait for Christmas
So we might have the sun—
That’s never what we got.
The shadow, like his ink, is neutral.
Criticism isn’t his, or yours.
Let’s face it: A poem is a dry rock.
Sans lightning, sans thunder, sans display,
Criticism pours.