Back In Erato’s Arms

Back in the good old days my English lecturer used to say
its not poetry unless you get subliminal feedback. I had no 

idea then of what could be deemed subliminally effective - 

if any of the five senses were excited, it seemed we were 

on something like the right track. But he explained, it’s not 

just in what the words say or mean or their rhythm, rhyme 

or metricality - better they coalesce into a grandiose unity 

giving readers impressive visions they genteelly suggest 

All these years later I think I see what he gestured at; if a 

sixth sense is wooed into ascetic complicity - & enlivened 

by reading the verse we’d see poetry in an entirely new & 

existential light - so maybe he was right; suffice for me to 

say with his ideas in mind, we’re then back in the arms of 

Erato and freed vicissitudes of dialectical modernity 

© 29 April 2017, I. D. Carswell