Two words

It seems to me that a one word poem, unless it consisted of a made up word, could never be any good. Its meaning would already have been absorbed at another time and there isn't much room for reimagination if it is only done by framing. Of course there is a staggering number of two word combinations many of them rarely if ever experienced. I was wondering if, as in any formal poem, there could be a method of writing a two worder- or is it that the regular lengths of structured poems have lengths that are related to the structure of language.

Martin Amis's Experience

Experience is a sentence to sentence pleasure.

....However this may be, I got very close to loving Jane. “I’m your wicked stepmother,” said Jane, after the wedding. And she was my wicked stepmother- but only in the sense meant by my son Louis, when he tells me (for instance) that he is “wicked at Latin”. Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate, and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you. And she worked on this little vice, and overcame it. When I see her now I resent our vanished relatedness, canceled by law but not by feeling. I also admire her as an artist, as I did then. Penetrating sanity: they both had that in their work. And I kept thinking, as I watched the household start to collapse, that if they could just stand back from this if they could write it instead, then, surely they would see.... But writers write far more penetratingly than they live. Their novels show them at their very best, making a huge effort: stretched until they twang.

This is honest, conversational, and well-written. The sentences vary without calling attention to themselves. This is because each structure is chosen to fit his meaning. There also is an effort to be impartial-to get outside of himself and understand the actions of others.
The paragraph is not as penetrating as I remember but this isn't much more than a better than average one.

Many of the criticisms of this book are true: the unexplained elisions of important figures (wives, etc.), an unwillingness to truly criticize people. But against such a smooth reading experience they don't matter. I can sit with this book every six months and enjoy a writer turning his full capabilities inward.