Why I like poetry

I read novels. Not all novels but. In the exceptional one each sentence hooks forward and stands fresh in perspective.

For example,

“One of the doctors said that his boot had probably saved his life, and she felt like kissing it, although in all the confusion, no one knew exactly where it had ended up.”

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Tree.

For example

Before me an older man of about my height but with fully twice my mass in his upper body. His torso was the size and shape of a bass drum

the piano mover arrives in T.E. Carhart’s The Piano Shop on the West Bank.

Low density sometimes distresses me. In sources unnamed there are other sentences.

Beyond narrator predicting, then it playing out as predicted, events happened then being recounted to another character the same way, and antecedent problems, so many redundancies and padding drive me just a little batty.

She gave her name to one of the doormen manning the entrance.

She stepped out the door and looked up at the blue sky outside.

She looked down at the terra cotta floor tiles.

She took in the cast plaster medallions and dentil on the ceiling.

She wondered if the little pink pill she swallowed was to blame.

She shrugged her shoulders.

She cut a piece of cheese and put it on a cracker, which was cold from the fridge.

She took her place at the end of the line.

The bell over the door jingled as the door shut after her.

redacted

I could pass over typos easier. Likewise poetry can state and explain the obvious but published ones are more likely to have been edited.