Weird personalized replay of college English

College English classes spend lots of time analyzing works that the authors may or may not have wanted analyzed.  I generally hated the exercise, but often wondered what the authors would have felt at hearing the conclusions drawn.

Well, today I got a taste of it.  An on-line literary magazine called The Foundling Review posted a poem of mine, Another Badger, More or Less (one of my favorite poems, actually).  Each week, they post two stories and two poems.  It turns out that every once in a while, they ask a prominent writer or editor to critique that week's issue.  They did this for the current week, so Miriam Kotzin, professor, author and editor, gives her critique of the two stories and two poems, including mine. 

If you go to the link above and click on the left on the title you can read my poem, but if you click on the right where it refers to THIRD EYE - a current issue commentary, you can read what Miriam Kotzin thinks about my poem. It is a weird sensation, although I have to say I appreciate the compliment in the first sentence about my poem:

"We can only hope that Ben Langhinrichs will not confine his future writing to technical work. "

What author would mind that analysis?

What has been said:

893.1. Danjamin (02/03/2010 09:57)

Beautiful poetry and language. The idea seems Buddhist to me - impermanance and irrelevance of all things. BTW Badger has gone out of style - I think you are supposed to say Rodent-American.