Call to Song

[O. M. Geezersnaps]

This is Mild, so I think I can get away with making this quick comment about the poetic use 'nerves'.


In the early 2000s, I was at a bookstore in a town not my own, and I was reading an Introduction to Charles Baudelaire's one main book, and it mentioned Paul Verlaine writing poems about nicotine and nerves. Which, by historical standards, makes 'nerves' "poetic".

But, look at how "nicotine" sets up the sounds in "nerves" for success. I shouldn't have been vague in my first crit -- I was getting to the end, and I was running out of steam. My point is pairing words appropriately so that they don't feel out of place. Tiger just used "groin" in a piece, which is as ugly a word as "crotch," but it wasn't grating because of word choices surrounding it. This is my point.