In ‘Delight in Disorder’ it is the promiscuous and sexy vibe from a woman. The telling is that you can be a mess and still be beautiful in any light. Yet, in ‘Still to be Neat’ it is quite the opposite, the author Johson likes women who are neat and basic in their beauty. The nature of art in this sense is that we share different views when it comes to art. For example, The Mona Lisa is a widely renown piece of art that people see in different forms. Some depict the Mona Lisa as smiling, while others see her as frowning or not having any form of expression. This can be greatly seen in how the two poets enforce different meanings and outlooks on how a woman’s beauty is portrayed.
I’d say, ‘Delight in Disorder’ holds a better argument than ‘Still to be Neat’, in lines 1-2 “A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness.” We can already see that the disorder is pleasing to the writer, how the second line opens us up to the sexual tension of how the woman looks, how he sees her and already wants to be with her sexually is the strength of this poem. The fact that he wants this woman so badly, with the use of diction and imagery helps us imagine how she looks. It makes us put up an image of a sexy woman not even trying to woo us over. Just because of how imperfect and real this is to us it shows that art doesn’t need to be precise and neat. It can be messy and hot and still garner our attention to continue watching, and staring. There also are the beats of these lines that go ba-bump, ba-bump, which bring rhythm into play. These ba-bumps are almost on how the speaker feels in this moment their heart is beating and reacting to how the woman is being expressed. It conveys this throughout the rest of the poem, and I think this is such a great play on rhythm since it continues to show the sound of that heartbeat getting faster as it goes on.
As in ‘Still to be Neat’ in lines 5-6 “Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound” this tells us more that sometimes not everything in art needs to be conveyed, yes, we may not find the meaning in art, but we can see everything else surrounding it. The word sweet is usually associated with something delicious or pleasant here the writer uses it to show us that art doesn’t have to be vibrant or straight in your face. While this can be true, it generally depends on how you see it. With the last word rhyming to the next line, it also creates a rhythm and a setting of happiness and fun in the poem. Which doesn’t really play on that on the meaning of the poem for me, it creates almost a false illusion of playful writing. When its talking about the simple beauty of art and how it corresponds to the simpleness of a woman’s beauty when she isn’t trying to seduce.
Art is a form of expression and how you choose to accept it, I like things more in my face and loud. While others may like the subtleties of art in its form. There are different ways to view art and judge it, a woman’s beauty can be the social standards of looking perfect all the time or being able to let loose and show her beauty without hiding anything on top. The fact of the matter is that one poem plays with our heart strings of desire and the other tells us to take things the simple way and not dig too much into it.
Kelly Flores