Sorry for the slow reply. I really appreciate all the hard work that you put into this critique, and I am sorry that the experience was so unpleasant for you.

One note: all of my literature deviations have "Easter Eggs," i.e., hidden messages that pop up when you hover the cursor over certain words in the poem or story. In most cases, when there is an obscure reference, you'll see an explanation when you hover the cursor over it. For example, when you hover the cursor over Mordwand, a definition appears. Not every reference has this, but most of the difficult ones do.

I fully admit to being out of step with today's culture of instant gratification and fast consumption, and as a consequence I don't expect to be hugely popular. You mention T.S. Eliot--my writing certainly falls in line with the tradition of modernism (and postmodernism and even post-postmodernism) that you could trace back to Eliot's The Wasteland, among other things. (Of course, I certainly don't pretend to belong in the same company as Eliot; he truly is one of the most masterful writers of the last century or so.)

The Wasteland is chock full of references and allusions that certainly make it difficult to appreciate fully. The same, of course, could be said of the work of many of the Romantic poets, of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, of Chaucer and his contemporaries, and of the classical Roman and Greek poets.

The very fair question to ask is whether the work involved in chasing down the allusions in my poetry is worth the effort. For some readers, obviously, the answer will be "no."

Again, you were very kind to put so much effort into writing a critique of this poem, and I thank you for it.