Lumpy pudding

Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)

Here we celebrate the excluded, lumpy parts of the pudding!

Sep 30, 2011 3:01pm
W. S. Merwin: Waking to the Rain The Night of my birthday I woke from a dream of harmony suddenly hearing an old man not my father I said but it was my father grasping my name as he fell on the stone steps outside just under the window in the rain I do not know how many times he may have called before I woke I was lying in my parents’ room in the empty house both of them dead that year and the rain was falling all around me the only sound — from The Rain in the Trees, 1988 (Photo - Jill Greenberg)

W. S. Merwin: Waking to the Rain

The Night of my birthday
I woke from a dream
of harmony
suddenly hearing
an old man not my father
I said but it was
my father grasping
my name as he fell
on the stone steps outside
just under the window
in the rain
I do not know
how many times
he may have called
before I woke
I was lying
in my parents’ room
in the empty house
both of them dead
that year
and the rain was falling
all around me
the only sound

— from The Rain in the Trees, 1988

(Photo - Jill Greenberg)
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