Is there such a thing as an unremarkable poem? Anyone inclined to answer, “Yes, duh,” should pause and consider just how much knowledge—and privilege—is needed before this question even becomes coherent, let alone affirmable. To judge a poem unremarkable requires a remarkable familiarity with a literature and its conventions, and such familiarity is not available equally to all. To my mind, the unremarkable poem is a bit like the ordinary reader: it’s easy enough to assume that one exists, somewhere, but finding real-life examples is harder than it seems, for if these concepts work well in theory, they fare poorly in the archive, where nothing is unremarkable or ordinary.
Jennifer Putzi is of two minds on this question. At the end of her fine study, she writes that “many of the poems I’ve discussed in Fair Copy are unremarkable poems—poems that, if they were addressed at all, would be alternately...
