I tried in two browsers to leave a comment on Ron’s blog re: torque but it just wouldn’t go through. Maybe he’s blocked me? Am I such a troublemaker? Anyway, here’s my two yen:
I was a bit thrown by the meth mention, too, until I un-torqued the sentence a little. At any rate, that would have been an interesting powder in the word salad.
Why don’t more poets under 40 employ much torque (it makes me glad I’m 43 — just made it under the torquing wire!)? A very good question. I wonder, are they afraid of it? Do they feel its usefulness has been played out? Do they find it boring?
I don’t know if it’s because Coolidge, Seaton, et al were like mother’s milk to me, but for me it’s an essential quality to the poeticization (i.e. the calling of attention to itself) of language. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a modern device, either. Milton strikes me as quite torqued, as does Donne. Maybe I am conflating “torque” and “complexity”? Even Byron seems torqued in that the sense in the lines must be twisted around to accommodate the witty rhymes.
If a poet doesn’t torque (v.) it makes me feel that they take grammar for granted, that they haven’t really thought about how to stretch, pummel, rip, dysraph, glue, knead, decorate, and deform it — and that kinda bores me! I want to see maximum attention at the microstructural level, not just a bunch of plain statements sitting there on the page like hard-boiled eggs.
Otohime 