Matt Morris’s Comments

Wallace Stevens says, “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully.” Yet if not fully accessible, poetry must be approachable so that the reader returns, not always to comprehend its complexities, but to delight in it. Humor may make a poem enjoyable as well as more readily understandable; the reader who “gets the joke” sees at least part of what the poem says by grasping the context in which it is funny. Of course, poetry needn’t amuse to engage the reader. When it adopts the appropriate voice—perhaps the poem's most crucial element—it can do almost anything.

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