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!

Jan 10, 2011 6:07am
The Place for No Story by Robinson Jeffers The coast hills at Sovranes Creek; No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin Over rock shaped like flame; The old ocean at the land’s foot, the vast Gray extension beyond the long white violence; A herd of cows and the bull Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope; And the gray air haunted with hawks: This place is the noblest thing I have ever seen. No imaginable Human presence here could do anything But dilute the lonely self-watchful passion. Photo: Edward Weston, 1933

The Place for No Story by Robinson Jeffers

The coast hills at Sovranes Creek;
No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin
Over rock shaped like flame;
The old ocean at the land’s foot, the vast
Gray extension beyond the long white violence;
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks:
This place is the noblest thing I have ever seen. No imaginable
Human presence here could do anything
But dilute the lonely self-watchful passion.

Photo: Edward Weston, 1933
Page 1 of 1