In the good old days, a poet could get by on a couple chill milked metaphors per poem. Shakespeare compared his lover to a summer's day, and it lasted him well until the volta. Nowadays, Bhanu Kapil's speaker eats the raw heart of a horse and has to grab a new image not one line later. Ocean Vuong says "It’s a shotgun. It shoots two eaters at once. They eat your lungs inside out. Little dog, tell her" and nobody blinks.
Inflation hurts poets, too.
