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!

Dec 15, 2011 8:08pm

Part of dust jacket of Muriel Rukeyser’s book of poems U.S. 1, 1938 (The Beinecke)