Reductive Criticism Inverts the Work of Art

Literary criticism in the seminar room works in exactly the opposite direction from the way a work of art works: a poem is unique, implicit, and embodied—affecting breathing, muscle tension, blood pressure, and making hair stand on end—whereas criticism extracts something general, abstract, and completely explicit, which is why poetry is so difficult to translate and why telling someone a poem's 'meaning' conveys nothing of the poem.