Issue 1: Perception Gaps

<b> Mauer Im Kopf </b> • <Witty but tastefully sentimental title>

Poetry

O say, pharisee, by the lamp’s failing light

<b> Mauer Im Kopf </b>

<Witty, but tastefully sentimental title>

<opening lines that establish tone and setting in a coy
yet inviting style> <statement that qualifes the speaker’s
intellectual, geographical or emotional
position> <detail about an object from the setting>

<statement which suggests a symbolic significance of the object
to the speaker> </introspective, potentially rhetorical statement
that provides information about the speaker’s earlier life/personal
relationships>

<wordplay presented as insight> <wordplay presented
as profound statement>

<proverb or quote attributed to an old/deceased friend> <spatial pause
to prompt brief refection> </allusion to a family member with
a description of them that blends with the landscape of the
setting>

<filler> <filler> <filler>
<statement/question about the object from the first stanza,
loaded with Jungian or Freudian significance> </witty, but
meaningless or irrelevant statement, considering the context>

<use of literary jargon to add dignity to a
weak final stanza> <‘one-last-look-around’ the setting
sentence> <profound statement that took eight drafts to have
the words ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘my’ removed from it>

<blank space where the sixth stanza
would have brought the poem to an unfashionably
heavy-handed conclusion>

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Edited by Zack Reeves.
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