The problem with ornate, poemy, and/or arched language

[matsunosuperfan]

It's not that it's bad in itself PER SE
Admittedly that's a matter of taste, to some degree

But I think the real, more objective issue is that to write like this, and have it really land, *you have to command the authority of the old masters*

Like sure write like Dylan Thomas if you want, it better goddamn feel like I'm reading Dylan Thomas level craft. Otherwise the predominant impression will be one of imitation by a less skilled amateur. The ostensible goal of the poem will be lost in unavoidable comparison and questioning of "did they say it that way because that's how this speaker talks, or because they think that's what a poem should sound like?"

It is very hard to write outside one's own contemporary vernacular without sounding like you're "putting it on"

[busker]

Dylan Thomas was great, but not uniformly so. His earlier work, such as “The force that through the green fuse” etc is unreadable though nice sounding gibberish.

I can only speak for myself, and my tastes are fairly catholic. I dislike pretentious, pseudo intellectual purportedly academic garbage. I can’t fathom why anyone will like Anne Carson as a poet outside of a small bubble of American leftist artsy types who have a very narrow view and experience of the world.

Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, Ruth Stone, Henry Vaughan, Ted Kooser - now I’m not widely read, but that’s a range, and they all write it wrote well. Sans gimmicks.

The main reason why I don’t think highly of modern poets is that they are the same shallow, artsy types with no life experience, writing endlessly about the trivial problems of their modern American urban existence. Earlier western poets weren’t such useless pansies. Poe died of rabies and Marlowe got stabbed. Goethe was an administrator. Shakespeare was a wily businessman first and a writer of comedies second. Radnoti was killed by the Nazis.

Ted Kooser was at least a farm boy. Geoff Hill was British. They had real lives. And that reflects in their poetry.

If you don’t love palaeontology, you can’t be a poet.
If you don’t like spreadsheets, you’re a poser

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This was a reply to the wrong thread - it was meant for your other post and got mixed up