paper profit

Poetry is paper profit, there for the taking anytime.

drip pause drip pause...

Leaky faucets have meter too.

court of judgment

Poetry 'tis a court
Of judgment on the soul.

—Henrik Ibsen, Lyrical Poems by Henrik Ibsen (Elkin Mathews, 1902, selected and translated by R. A. Streatfeild)

wordsmiths

The worst of our poets refer to themselves as ‘wordsmiths’.

self-inflicted

In composing a parody one tars oneself as the lesser poet.

unsound combination

A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror.

—Wilhelm Steinitz

prickly

A text prickly with quotable passages.

without stops

The poem as ‘elevator pitch’ in free fall from the seventieth floor of one’s emotions.

end game

Another famous poet dying alone, unnoticed.

lost word of god

Honor your poet, one of
Moses’ shattered commandments.

—Gerald Stern, Not God After All (Autumn House Press, 2004)

perfect circle, perfect couplet

If in poetry there was an analog to Vasari’s story about Giotto’s perfect circle, would it be the ability to compose a perfect pentameter couplet as epigram on any given subject? ("Perfetto come la 'O' di Giotto", the Italian meaning: "As perfect as Giotto's circle".)

overextended

A line too far.

supreme fiction

With apologies to Stevens, it’s criticism that is the ‘supreme fiction’.

solved by substitution of terms

The essential feature of mathematical creativity is the exploration, under the pressure of powerful implosive forces, of difficult problems for whose validity and importance the explorer is eventually held bound by. The reality is the physical world."
— Alfred W. Adler, “Reflections: Mathematics and Creativity”, New Yorker (1972)

The essential feature of poetic creativity is the exploration, under the pressure of powerful implosive forces (the emotions), of difficult problems from whose validity and importance the explorer is eventually released. The reality is the physical world.

half-heard

Poems coming often half-heard from a radio turned down low in an adjoining room.

kudzu

Vegetal and adjectival, the kudzu description overwhelmed the passages.

can't touch this

A book so critically bulletproof, I checked to see if the cover had been made of Kevlar.

novelistic scope

I want to portray every situation in life, every type of physiognomy, every kind of male and female character, every way of living, every profession, every social stratum, every French province, childhood, the prime of life and old age, politics, law and war—nothing is to be omitted. When this has been done and the story of the human heart revealed thread by thread, social history displayed in all its branches, the foundations will have been laid. I have no wish to describe episodes that have their springs in the imagination. My theme is that which actually happens everywhere.

—Honoré Balzac, quoted in Stefan Zweig’s Balzac (translated by Willam and Dorothy Rose, Viking Press, 1946)

via vox

He read often at open mikes, considering them form and venue for ephemeral aural publication.

bad floorboard

The line was mushy like a rotten floorboard that could give way at any moment.

positively negatively incapable

I’m afraid not only am I capable of ‘irritable reaching after’, but at times I’m prone to some agitated flailing about.