Twaddle

The poems of N_______   C___ are rife with twaddle.

Twaddle too are the encomiums accorded them by other poets and included on the back cover of NC's latest book, _______________one of which acknowledges "a knot at the center of this language working its way free of tense and the tension of syntax as it pushes against the presence of the world in which these poems exist."

The modality of twaddle--modality being another word frequently invoked by the admirers of NC of behalf of her poems--is the logic that allows twaddle to disguise itself as a poem when being written and prose when being written about.

Twaddle is hereby defined as language in service to itself, while actual poetry and decent prose is language in service to something beside itself.

Twaddle sometimes may be employed in the service of actual poetry or even decent prose: Caesar Vallejo and his "pharonic sandbanks", Paul Celan's celebration of "autumn and silk and nothingness", and Michael Hannon's happiness arriving "under a dome of infinite pomegranate" are instances when twaddle seems to jump up off the page as if right from the poet's deranged brain and the writing and the reading of it seems neither right or wrong. In the case of the poems of NC, it's a shame the poems are so poorly written when twaddle had such a chance to shine.