No Carrots, No Kidding

Poetry is dead: the critic prescribes T.S. Eliot show-don't-tell poetry, but the crowd plays cold on the prescription. There must be reasons for this, among those being that humans find show-and-show poetry to be too optically contrived as to come petty and trivial, even as such poetry goes in neglect of the also-auditory human: Frank Sinatra's art goes as human as Pablo Picasso's--and poetry finds the capacity for both. Cave painting goes well with cave walls and grunts, but chalk or paint is not articulate wine--it plays poison in the palate, mutes the Muse, and spoils the sport in the read. Eliot-ry makes for the cold crowd reception by belaboring the tale in show-and-show-and-show. "No Carrots, No Kidding" is versified objection to the T.S. Eliot assertion that Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is "... an artistic failure."