The need for critical analysis

Of course, if the purpose of criticism is to dig for deeply buried (and sometimes nonexistent) meanings in order to elevate the critic and prove his ability to 'interpret' the cryptic inscriptions that today pose as poetry, then it is true that narrative verse does not offer a very fertile ground for the digging. The fact is that criticism has become too concerned with "what a poem means" and has forgotten to address "how a poem means" (Hyles Afterword 175, emphasis added). We have forgotten that what a poem tells us about the external world is not its only importance. Of equal, or perhaps more, importance is how we get there. In poetry, the signifier is at least as important as the signified. In fact, "good criticism has [always been committed] to illumination, to being ancillary to the work" (Hyles Afterword 175). In this aspect, narrative verse, and by extension fantasy verse, can certainly benefit from critical analysis or explication.