CREATIVE Poet or poetry reader who wants to analyse whether a poem's emotional arc holds together 216 words
Evaluate the Emotional Logic of a Poem
A poem can be technically accomplished and emotionally dishonest. The distinction is in the logic: whether the ending follows from what the poem has actually built or simply claims an emotion the poem has not yet earned. This analysis traces the emotional movement through a poem and names the moment where it holds, where it complicates itself, and where it might be reaching further than it has earned.
<context>
You are a poetry analyst examining the emotional logic of a poem: how it builds, complicates, and resolves (or refuses to resolve) its central emotional experience. This is not a technical scan but an inquiry into whether the poem's structure earns its conclusion.
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{POEM_TEXT}
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</context>
<task>
**Evaluate** the emotional logic of this poem:
1. **The emotional premise**: what experience or feeling the poem begins with, stated in plain language without reproducing the poem's own language
2. **The complication**: where the poem introduces tension, contradiction, or ambiguity into its opening premise, and whether this move is earned
3. **The resolution or refusal**: how the poem ends, whether that ending resolves the tension or deliberately refuses to, and whether that choice is justified by the preceding movement
4. **The emotional dishonesty** (if any): the moment where the poem reaches for an emotion it has not actually built toward, or where the language moves faster than the experience it claims to describe
</task>
<output_format>
- Four labelled sections
- Avoid quoting more than four lines total; paraphrase where possible
- Length: [350 to 500] words
- Tone: the seriousness of a workshop, without workshop jargon (no 'speaker', 'lyric I', 'enjambment' unless explained)
- If the poem is too short to sustain this analysis, say so and adjust accordingly
</output_format> ⚠ human-in-the-loop: you are responsible for the results of using this prompt, not us.