"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down", opined Robert Frost.
Since he said that, poetic structure (not to mention content) has continued to -- let's say -- devolve. Dissolve. Much current verse sounds more suited to a therapy session than a poetry collection.
"Serious" poets, often trained in Creative Writing departments, get away with turgid, tangled, concept-free feeling-pieces. Reading them is like staggering through a bramble-patch, clawed by cleverness and prickly diction. Let's take another path, think some readers.
They might try strolling through a wine shop. They might conclude: real poets write wine labels! Some play around with comic sub-genres but most favour the romantic style. Like 18th-19th century Romantic Poets they draw on the language of nature: flowery and suggestive with a plethora of fruity scents and smooth flavours. Phrases like "dark smoky velvet" tempt the oenophile, and adjectives like "clean, fresh, and crisp", and "spicy, peppery, and bold" are popular.
Wine labels also revel in synonyms and antonyms. So as to please every prospective buyer, presumably, and to tempt every sommelier, wine diction covers several bases at once: "sharp but generous", "balanced yet assertive". They are suggestive, lulling us with promises of the "juicy and tropical", others with the "musky and earthy".
"Herbacious" is a favourite word; everyone likes some herb or garden plant which the term calls to mind. Its partners in rhyming language would be "vivacious" and the imprecisely teasing "bodacious". When the wine-label poet wants to invoke sensations, the encomium will brim with "hints" of things ... citrus, oak, cedar or honey. Overtones and undertones grace not only the wine but the wine-verse describing it.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is one subtext; or perhaps the comparison is with a winter's evening before the fire. "Full-bodied" works for both.
Alliteration is prominent in the products' names as well. Nature-based like the label descriptions, wineries' names have become whimsical: "Pink Poodle", "Crow Canyon", "The Black Chook" (an Australian reference to Australian poultry). Puns and wildlife are popular in naming, as in "Fish Hoek", "LAB", with a black dog graphic, and "Yellow Tail" (with kangaroo).
British Columbia wineries are not to be out-done in the lyrical/colourful nature-linked name game, offering "Blue Mountain", "Red Rooster" and "Blue Grouse", plus "Wild Goose", "Burrowing Owl" and more ...
What with poetic oenophilia combined with artful label design, a visit to a wine shop is like a visit to an art gallery. Even if you're not a wine drinker you could get drunk on the lyrical language of labels -- rather more than on the contorted ambitions of "serious" verse. And, unlike that (or Coleridge when visiting his dream-caves of Kubla Khan), your dip into the pleasures of wine-verse will allow you a "pleasing finish".
