John Koethe, "To an Audience"

"I knew the artifice would finally come to this: / an earnestness embodied in a style." Doesn't that define Koethe's poetry? An earnestness that puts the audience to sleep. One wants to grab him by the lapels and shake the dullness out of him. The dull simile, "like children playing with some blocks." The overall tiredness of the diction. His explorations of solipsism have engaged me in the past, but no longer. I'd rather be reading Ashbery. 7.