I like Jack Kimball's Pantaloons, and his poetry too, for the way his tone totters between this and that, like heartfelt, snide, pained, loving and such. his tone is never a determined element, but is possessed of the natural waver that is our human instinct. natural, that is, in our 'real' world. in writing, we tend to extend and aggravate the tone, making a verisimilitude that then just maunders on to fatuous. I argue with Whitman, and numerous other writers, myself included, when they take their feelings so seriously that it just becomes embellishment.