kelp diver

He had delved so deeply into the poem that he felt submerged in the text, a diver with the alphabet twisting upward around him like kelp.

retrospective advantage

Often when someone longs for ‘the spirit of the past’, they forget that spirit was a critical distillate made during a successive age.

rule to judge

When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly manner.

—La Bruyère, Characters (Oxford U. Press, 1962), translated by Henri Van Laun.

word origins

You will need to know some etymology in order to access the poem’s full resources.

odd angle

Critic, see it slant.

working dog

A critic should be a terrier let loose in a thicket of letters.

late remark

L'esprit de l'escalier…when reading, one might say, 'the wit of the turned page'.

vicarious mastery

In practice there may be in the making of literature a great deal of one or another kind of technique, whether apparently superficial and formalistic or apparently substantial or ideological, and this technique may be deliberate or habitual or traditional. On the other hand, there may be apparently very little technique. It is never possible, in the given case, to say even roughly how much or what kinds or combinations of kinds of technique were employed until after long intimacy and absorption of the work has, by vicarious mastery, made the question artificial; for the we use the work as use other actual experience.

—R. P. Blackmur, “Notes on Four Categories in Criticism,” The Lion and the Honeycomb: Essays in Solicitude and Critique (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1955.

burn bar

A critic whose eye was like a burn bar going into a safe.

spinning wheel

This section of your poem is just buffering.

polar response

Just another poem I could either tear apart or take at face value.

unassailable offering

She wrote a workshop-proof poem.

anger management

Call my poem a ‘text’ one more time and I’ll knock your teeth out.

wear and tear reader

He didn’t just read poems he wore them out.

cased the joint

He cased the poem thoroughly like a good critic always does.

wonk this way

He feared he was becoming a poetry wonk.

allusions galore

Critical readings mass produce allusions.