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!

May 24, 2010 11:50pm
Theodore Roethke - Epidermal MacabreIndelicate is he who loathesThe aspect of his fleshy clothes, —The flying fabric stitched on bone,The vesture of the skeleton,The garment neither fur nor hair,The cloak of evil and despair,The veil long violated byCaresses of the hand and eye.Yet such is my unseemliness:I hate my epidermal dress,The savage blood’s obscenity,The rags of my anatomy,And willingly would I dispenseWith false accouterments of sense,To sleep immodestly, a mostIncarnadine and carnal ghost.Photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1959

Theodore Roethke - Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, —
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

Photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1959
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