Challenge 97

Colors and Poetry

This issue’s Challenge is mercifully succinct:

How do you interpret the title of Kristen Tracey’s “Words and Colors No Man Can Understand”?
What do you think the “larger story” is in “Words and Colors”? What’s going on, in literal terms?
“Words and Colors” at least suggests several characters. With an idea of what the “larger story” might be, how might it be written in the style of Ian Donnell Arbuckle’s Made It Way Up ?

In “Starts with a P,” Steven Utley quotes some “heavy hitters” on the subject of poetry and poets. In what way are all of them — from the optimists (Santayana and Sandburg) to the pessimists (Mencken and Congreve) — right?
Why might one think that the “punch line” of Steven’s essay is intended ironically?