Appreciating Poetry Requires Acts Of Archaeology

The critic must reconcile history and poetry. A poem is a product of its time just as much—if the poem’s any good—as a triumph over its time. Many poems are so familiar we have forgotten how to read them. We see the words but we paper over the cracks in our understanding. Criticism should try to see poems from the inside, to get down into the muck of the poem’s invention—and of course into the muck of its language.

Article source here:Arts Journal