bored through

I was bored by your poem…no, what I mean to say, is that your poem bored through me.

not that close

His close reading of poems was ‘close’, in that it was inexact.

in junger times

Not as ‘Jung’ as I once was, I find I’m less interested in archetypes and symbols.

eyes glazed over

The scholar, after spending many hours annotating the text, was glossy-eyed.

not a blush

A writer who could not be embarrassed by anything he’d written, therefore he was destined to go unred. (sic)

not the marrying kind

The couplet rimes were a bad match: One was turning in circles at the altar, and the other forgot the ring.

internal space

The meditation was so unremittingly blah, I suggested the poet might need to hire an ‘interiority decorator’.

end stop line

Elegy for the formalist: He gave us his last full measure.

bestest mostest etc

Hyberbollocks: Exaggerated nonsensical praise, often evidenced by the author’s blurbs.

impaired

One might say the last two lines of that sonnet were ‘the odd couplet’.

continuous shriek

The confessional poet’s writing style could be described as ‘scream of consciousness’.

ear candy

A plain villanelle: one without that line tart or sweet to the ear on first hearing.

therefore iamb

When people asked if he was a formalist poet, he’d answer: “I amb.”

sound heavy

He had so much similar rime going on in the poem, I suggested he should ‘echonomize’.

as stock-in-trade

A poet will always have a few choice words for you.

pun at his expense

He released a collected poems when a selected would do. But then, his work was always a little oeuvre the top.

renga gang

The haiku poet was a known rengaleader.

usual suspect

The poet had opportunity and motif.

muse crossing

The sign said ‘Muse Next 10 Miles’. So I backed off the accelerator and kept my eyes peeled. (‘I have a feeling we’re not in Maine anymore, Toto.’)

beset piece

It could be described as a beset piece.