The onset of winter

[Todd]

While I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with me, the reason I don't like stood in line one is beauty doesn't stand in itself. It feels like a sloppy construction to me. It could just be me.

I realize now that when I read that line, in my mind, I associated the phrase with the phrase "to stand in contrast" to something. I like it with the word "stood" in there, maybe that's why.

I make lots of associations without always being able to articulate them, which is why it's sometimes hard to give feedback beyond saying I like something, like when I first read this poem. You really have to do some digging to analyze "why," if you're able to analyze it at all. Then, in a way, analyzing, like dissecting, tears it apart and the magic goes out of your experience of the poem like breath out of body at the moment of death. Like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So I guess it's good to keep a bird's-eye view of the whole poem while changing it and not focus on changes in isolation, but to approach the poem as one whole life and not a sum of words and linguistic constructs.

The magic can also go out of a poem if one of the parts is off too. All approaches have merit. There's only so far we can go in mild though.

We should probably take this up in another thread if we want to explore this further so as not be unfair to this thread.