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One of the most basic deeds of poetry is to move the reader in a way which obliterates the distinction between intellectual and emotional. or, I should say, harmonizes them. That's what I mean by "move". That's what poetry does. But if the harmony isn't there... if the conjunction seems forced... it's not love, it's something else. as Mandelstam put it, the Muse never rumpled the bedsheets. I guess you wrote before my latest "Graham" missive, Candice. I admitted that the example Mark sent was NOT bombast - and there is something pleasing in the conjunction of verse & river. I must stop issuing pronunciamentos - it's not fair to a poet I haven't read very thoroughly - and yet I can't help speculating that that "I say 'iridescence' / and look down" line - its self-conscious, self-assertive preciosity - is the line that apotheosizes 20 years of US neo-romantic effusions - and predicts quite clearly the weaknesses embedded in Graham's more ambitious poems. Henry