Sometimes, in my grumpiest editorial moods, I think the primary difference between a poet and a scholar of poetry is that poets learn to be better writers by reading poetry, and scholars don't.

Why devote a dissertation, even a career, to the work of a particular poet--a person you consider to be a great artist worthy of intense, obsessive study--while simultaneously cranking out reams of undigested prose flecked with faddish pomposities hideous to ear, eye, and intellect? In the midst of that clot, your quotations from the poet shine like eyes in the dark. There she is, ready to teach you clarity of word choice, cadence of phrase, originality of thought; but you pay no attention. You are wrapped up in your so-called thesis, which devolves into some version of "Watch me show you what the poet meant! You will be impressed!"

I am not.