1. What did you enjoy about the sound of the sonnet? Is it musical? What was most effective? Did the shape of it with the anaphora add clarity? Was it rhetorically appropriate or contrived? The Shakespearean sonnet often has a concluding couplet with a whiplash or epigrammatic feeling; is this sonnet successful in following this tradition?

2. Here is a pair of phrases in the sonnet: "troubled histories" in line 11 and "tumbled mysteries" in line 12; does this pair suggest the poet's skill or is it cheap? Does it enhance the meaning or distract when read aloud? What about alliterative phrases such "fathomed more than flesh," and "realm of reasonable"? Is it fun to say them or are they noise? Or are they so integral than the sound and the meaning merge? Is the language suggestive or impenetrable?

3. About the couplet: The octave recalls ritual and artistic works, but the third quatrain refers to the sonnet itself and, along with others in the "introit" section, to the book itself. Is this arrogant or overly-presumptuous? Does such a claim offer respect to Shakespeare or blaspheme the Shakespearean tradition epitomized in his Sonnet 55, "Not marble nor the gilded monuments / Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme . . . ."

4. Still about the couplet: Some writers characterize our age of modernity as one of "disenchantment." To what extent does the power of art, such as those works referenced in the sonnet, persist in coaching us toward transcendence ("still Bach sings")? Are we losing appreciation for beauty or recovering the capacity for it? Does the sonnet suggest any remedy?

5. To what extent might a reader read the sonnet as a refreshing call to notice afresh the beauty in the world and/or evidences of God's grace? And of perhaps some irresistible urge of the divine and/or creative urge toward beauty?

6. As late as Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address, he could refer to "believers in a living God." How has Western culture changed so that the claim in the last line, "By mortals God is killed," is presentable as a statement of fact, even if provocative?

7. How would you describe the purpose and effect of the repeated "Don't ask" (a paradox of prohibition and attention) beginning each quatrain with accumulation of things identified not to ask about, sort of like saying, "Don't think of an elephant,"? Does the couplet then justify the prohibitions?

8. The title of my book is Thanks for Noticing. Yet this sonnet, early in the book, requests no questions. Is that cool? The somewhat scholarly apparatus of the glosses nonetheless presents an intense "noticing." Is the tension between the poem’s anaphora surface command not to inquire and the detailed somewhat academic footnotes — which notices, catalogs, and explains — fun, disingenuous, or ironic, or what?

9. Notice the ambiguity about the nature of same-sex friendships mentioned. Is this ambiguity trivial or meaningful? Is the ambiguity key to appreciating the "Don't ask" message, or incidental? Is it politically correct or does it point to something more important than preoccupation with sexual expression, or is it dishonest ("Todos hecho, nada dicho")? or does the reader have the right to one's own interpretation? Or does it do all of this at the same time?

1. Objective — What do you see/have you seen/heard/etc — scenes, objects, dialog, characters, events, shapes, movements, etc.

2. Reflective — What objects, emotions, moods, themes became symbols for larger meaning?

3. Interpretive — What is the work of art about? What would aliens learn about humanity from it? What is its message?

4. Decisive — How would you title or summarize this art? What personal experiences or historical circumstances does it prompt? How does it affect your future? How might it enlarge (or diminish) your understanding of yourself and the world?

1. What did the writer try to do?

2. Was the writer successful?

3. Was it worth doing?

The questions which interest me most when reading a poem are two. The first is technical:
“Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?” The second is, in the broadest sense, moral:
“What kind of guy inhabits this poem? What is his notion of the good life or the good place? His notion of the Evil One? What does he conceal from the reader? What does he conceal even from himself?”

Here several AI engines pretend they are Auden:
https://www.cres.org/TFN_AI.htm#2Auden