Briefly, I was impressed with the last four stanzas, and profoundly apathetic about the other two, which sounded stylized and sentimental. There was one particular line which caught my attention: “Shine above our steel erections”. The image of the dialectic as a benignant sun is probably your most powerful idea in the poem, and the idea of the contrary steel erections is pretty powerful too. Reminds me of Big Brother or something.

I echo the commendations of PB and EM concerning this poem’s intriguing vocabulary and diction. If you’re open to critique, I have to say that the tetrameter of trochees always feels like Vaudeville to me–more likely to inspire a smirk than an introspection. It’s employment here seems somewhat incongruous. I am, perhaps, an ignoramus.

I’m curious to see a more precise explanation of this sentence: ” . . . it’s not a prayer for deliverance from aimlessness so much as a hope that divinity can be delineated in and even perfect that very aimlessness.” That is strange.

Abe – I’m absolutely open to critique, and I know what you mean when you say that it feels like Vaudeville- but I think that’s probably a unavoidable product of my taste: I like my thinking couched firmly in absurdity, and there’s something that’s very attractive to me about trying to say something thoughtful in a form that’s not only riddled with examples of ridiculously thoughtless writing, but is also inherently singsongy.

As far as an explanation, what I mean is that in writing this I tried to focus on expressing the hope that this world become better now, rather than that we get a new world in some indeterminate future; that by grace- or, I guess, what people more often call providence- some sort of holy harmony might exist, or come to exist, even in the ugly humdrum of hearts and cities; that, after all, things- emotions, societies, artforms, all things- are moving toward some inevitable goal.

I thought it was interesting, if I read it as what you say it is – a hymn. Your desire for saved (and hence resurrected) nations and grace in “lectures”, “committees”, “architectures”, etc. is, like it or not, doctrinal. And it’s stunning. But apart this, you shy away from expressing any real theology, a thing you doubtless do because you think theology would deaden your hymn. The result is that your hymn is thought-provoking, contemplative, and ambiguous. What, after all, are you expecting to see coming out of these cogent lectures, or mundane committees, or new architectures? You could fit anything in there. Evangelicalism. Catholicism. Calvinism. Liberalism. In some ways, it lacks the proper audacity of a hymn and the love of definitive ideas. There is nothing boisterous or joyous about your poem, because, in attempting to avoid the mortifying effects of theology, you’ve created something that’s rather dead. In other ways, of course, I can’t help seeing your crypto-postmil coming out, which is very audacious indeed. It’s the most vibrant part of your poem.