Cryptocrap is defined by what it lacks: clarity, technique, and performance value. In short, it is the direct antithesis of poetry. Only on a good day is it forgettable.
As best we can tell, the "aesthetic" seems to be:
If you have judged a poetry contest you may have noticed the paucity of the incoherent linebreaking so omnipresent in academic journals. At some level, these students and their professors have enough self-awareness to know that cryptocrap has no readership or audience. Not now. Not ever.
Speaking of "not ever"...
If you never take anything away from this series, learn this: Never concede that your words are not memorable--not poetry--by reading them aloud in public.
Karen Solie
"So is this 'Karen Solie' the exception to this generalization about cryptocrap?"
Good question!
"And the answer?"
Sort of.
"Well, can she write poems or not?"
She cannot.
"So why...?"
She can write brilliant lines. One per poem.
"So, killer and filler poems?"
Yes, but minus the filler.
"How does that work? Examples?"
Filler and Killer
"Hookers" by Marco Morales is an oft-used exemplar:
"Missing you again
I embrace shallow graves
Pale faces, doughlike breasts
help me forget."
And what question do we ask ourselves when judging poetry?
"Why will I remember these words long after I forget others?"
Correct. So which of these is the killer?
"I embrace shallow graves."
Of course. Now concentrate on the other lines. Are they incidental or do they help the cause? And if so, how?
The sounds repeat: The long "A" sounds of "again", "pale" and "faces" hitting on "embrace" and "graves". The short "e" sounds in "breasts", "help" and "forget" echoes "em[brace]", the long "O" sounds in "doughlike" and "forget" catching on the unstressed "shallow", the hard "g" sounds of "again", "forget" and "graves" from the key line.
And the rhythm?
"All iambs except for acephaly at the start and "help me" at the beginning of the final line."
See how all that filler turns a brilliant line into a masterful poem?
"Yes."
All of that is missing.
Now look at a typical Karen Solie effort: "for Erik"
First, tell us what the killer line is.
an essential knowledge or intuition
that age, like water, like wind, erodes,
in ig|norance | recast | as in|nocence
by all the insipid diocese of wellness
If you recall anything from this piece a month from now it will be the internal rhyming iambs of this line with its "n", short "i" and short "a" sounds. Quite pretty, but it needs--among other things--the surrounding lines to give context to the abstractions: ignorance and innocence. Talking about the erosion of "essential knowledge or intuition" being ignorance or innocence compounds violations of:
The Barnacles Rule
Substitute some form of the word "barnacles" to test the need for any particular word.
For example, the line directly following the killer could be any of the following without being any less obscure:
by all the insipid diocese of wellness
by all the barnacled diocese of wellness
by all the insipid barnacles of wellness
by all the insipid diocese of barnacles
Many of us will be inspired by a great line. Poets will backfill the other lines with technique, like a beautiful setting for a precious gem. Karen will toss it into word salad, her task ending where a poet's begins. It's like the Densuke Problem in microcosm. A stunning line can make pedestrian ones seem even more banal by comparison. Of course, other cryptocrappers won't have such a line in the first place. As such, Solie is better than any other linebreaker. By exactly one line per poem.
"In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king."
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