08-09-2026, 01:19 PM
Thanks for the feedback. I might have to step in here, not so much to defend the work, as to ask for elaboration.
Re costume vernacular. You say you'd get tired by St4 of Se1. Putting those stanzas into prose:
A giant from the northern coasts of France struck with a club the giant sat on the shining cliffs of Dover, stomped on his slumping back, and shouted "Now I'm lord of all this land!" Wiping away the brains about the knot of wood he used for a weapon, he drew a knife and started to skin and butcher the corpse beneath him, passing the ribs for braising and loins for frying to gluttons he called peers---to himself leaving, beside the nutritious offal, the foremost right to settle any disputes that should arise between his peers and the corpse's former dependents kept somewhat free as labor-selling tenants.
The first sentence is pretty darn straightforward. I don't detect anything archaic about it at all, syntactically speaking. The second sentence is mostly straightforward---it's literally the one inversion you critique that's the issue (put there more to slant rhyme with the previous line and to echo the start of its own line), plus how if it's taken as prose it would be rather long. I have to wonder if it's the "vernacular" that would leave you tired by that point, or if it's something else.
The next example you give is equally questionable. Again putting the line into prose:
And should a slave be risked to reach a state for which the free repine?
Syntactically, it's nothing you'd not find in, say, a college-level essay. Is the issue there with the word choice, 'repine'? Is the issue in general with the word choice, where the author seems to be using more difficult words than the average conversationalist would use? Where the author's diction seems less in line with lyric poetry as it is today, and more with epic poetry, or rather with the novel? In which case, I'm not sure why poetry should be so eager to limit itself as a genre....
But perhaps the most useful clarification for me, considering this is in Intensive, is what specifically you find to be archaic in this piece. As in, which parts exactly do you find to be archaic-sounding---every one of them, without necessarily elaborating on how (though that would be welcome)---since, to me, it would seem that there is a deliberate movement here. The critic says they'd be most engaged with Se5: is it not so much the theme, since there might be the same sort of tension in the earlier sections as in that last one, as the more straightforward style? Is the piece actually, deliberately 'archaic' or 'haute' at the start, only moving towards plainness as it progresses? And does that shift of style actually work---does it play towards the piece's supposed intentions, or does it detract from them?
Re content wise. Se2 has been critiqued individually before. At this point, half the critiques of it detect there's something more to it just bubbling under the surface, while the other half---in being quite defeated by the section---just declare it to be cliche. I find it fascinating, if somewhat disappointing, considering that the piece now contains a much broader variety of allegorical levels: I had hoped my readers would be a bit more careful.
So now I have to ask, with the other sections, what exactly do you find cliche, what exactly do you 'already know'. Se1---is it cliche because it says capitalism is vicious, like giants that butcher each other for meat? But then what about Se3, where another giant is involved---what's cliche about that giant's journey? And could that giant being involved in something simultaneously subtler (no sudden intimations of violence, no thematically blunt title) and more explicit (the title, while not thematically blunt, I imagined would have encouraged some further reading, since it refers to an actual place, to an actual history) hint that the message behind the giants of Se1 is far less 'capitalism is vicious' and far more something very, very, very specific? ....Or is that message actually, readily apparent, and it just so happens that I've never read a single poem about, say, the 1999 work of Ellen Meiksins Wood? And this suite of questions also applies to Se2, where a particular point or allegory is being made, with one of the earlier critiques coming pretty darn close to it.
Re costume vernacular. You say you'd get tired by St4 of Se1. Putting those stanzas into prose:
A giant from the northern coasts of France struck with a club the giant sat on the shining cliffs of Dover, stomped on his slumping back, and shouted "Now I'm lord of all this land!" Wiping away the brains about the knot of wood he used for a weapon, he drew a knife and started to skin and butcher the corpse beneath him, passing the ribs for braising and loins for frying to gluttons he called peers---to himself leaving, beside the nutritious offal, the foremost right to settle any disputes that should arise between his peers and the corpse's former dependents kept somewhat free as labor-selling tenants.
The first sentence is pretty darn straightforward. I don't detect anything archaic about it at all, syntactically speaking. The second sentence is mostly straightforward---it's literally the one inversion you critique that's the issue (put there more to slant rhyme with the previous line and to echo the start of its own line), plus how if it's taken as prose it would be rather long. I have to wonder if it's the "vernacular" that would leave you tired by that point, or if it's something else.
The next example you give is equally questionable. Again putting the line into prose:
And should a slave be risked to reach a state for which the free repine?
Syntactically, it's nothing you'd not find in, say, a college-level essay. Is the issue there with the word choice, 'repine'? Is the issue in general with the word choice, where the author seems to be using more difficult words than the average conversationalist would use? Where the author's diction seems less in line with lyric poetry as it is today, and more with epic poetry, or rather with the novel? In which case, I'm not sure why poetry should be so eager to limit itself as a genre....
But perhaps the most useful clarification for me, considering this is in Intensive, is what specifically you find to be archaic in this piece. As in, which parts exactly do you find to be archaic-sounding---every one of them, without necessarily elaborating on how (though that would be welcome)---since, to me, it would seem that there is a deliberate movement here. The critic says they'd be most engaged with Se5: is it not so much the theme, since there might be the same sort of tension in the earlier sections as in that last one, as the more straightforward style? Is the piece actually, deliberately 'archaic' or 'haute' at the start, only moving towards plainness as it progresses? And does that shift of style actually work---does it play towards the piece's supposed intentions, or does it detract from them?
Re content wise. Se2 has been critiqued individually before. At this point, half the critiques of it detect there's something more to it just bubbling under the surface, while the other half---in being quite defeated by the section---just declare it to be cliche. I find it fascinating, if somewhat disappointing, considering that the piece now contains a much broader variety of allegorical levels: I had hoped my readers would be a bit more careful.
So now I have to ask, with the other sections, what exactly do you find cliche, what exactly do you 'already know'. Se1---is it cliche because it says capitalism is vicious, like giants that butcher each other for meat? But then what about Se3, where another giant is involved---what's cliche about that giant's journey? And could that giant being involved in something simultaneously subtler (no sudden intimations of violence, no thematically blunt title) and more explicit (the title, while not thematically blunt, I imagined would have encouraged some further reading, since it refers to an actual place, to an actual history) hint that the message behind the giants of Se1 is far less 'capitalism is vicious' and far more something very, very, very specific? ....Or is that message actually, readily apparent, and it just so happens that I've never read a single poem about, say, the 1999 work of Ellen Meiksins Wood? And this suite of questions also applies to Se2, where a particular point or allegory is being made, with one of the earlier critiques coming pretty darn close to it.