ways to go wrong

There are many ways for a poem to go wrong, and in composition one would do well to follow all of them.

wrong, wrong again

Remember, both the writer and the publisher could be wrong about the work’s worth.

right kind of wrong

A poem that was the right kind of wrong, making its missteps due to its leaps or when getting to close to an edge.

battle lines

There are many ways to go wrong in writing a political poem, but the number is no greater than those encountered in writing a love poem.

perfect prospect

A poem that has many ways to go wrong.

art of questionable character

Poetry is literature’s vice. When critics admonish the current state of poetry for its lack of social acceptability, for its recalcitrance, we know the art is going wrong in a good way.

recognized wrong

Thus a wrong—an injustice—done a poet who is really a poet, excites him to a degree which to ordinary apprehension appears disproportionate with the wrong. Poets see injustice, never where it does not exist, but very often where the unpoetical see no injustice whatever.

—Charles Baudelaire, “Further Notes on Edgar Poe,” The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon Press, 1964), translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne.