Taste as self-defense

 What I mean is this. If we don't have taste, then we cannot call something cringe-worthy. Something is calling to me in need of being condemned, and I need to listen to that.  Take this translation of Venuti's from a translation from the Catalan. If it were an original poem in English, I would criticize certain lines:

"with everything halted in midcourse" = boring language / how is that a line of poetry? 

"gradation of solitudes / lifts its face" = pretentious / difficult to visualize. Mushy writing.  

"the solitude that wafts" = "lyrical" [cringe]

"the kind that costs dearly / to reach" = infelicitous  

"to escape from urban loneliness" = just, no.  It's too obvious. Also, is loneliness and solitude the same word in the Catalan? I'll have to look. 

"and the kind experienced only" = prosaic, not interesting, language is not charged with meaning. These are supposed to be different kinds of solitudes, in gradations, but they blurring together in my mind. 

Overall: too many relative clauses. Too many enjambments where the part after the line break is less interesting, like "a gradation of solitudes / lifts its face." "the kind that costs dearly / to reach." stirring leaves / and branches." 

Now, I could look at it in Catalan, too. I don't know how much of the fault lies with the poet and how much with the translator.  Venuti complains that a poem from this project was rejected and that the editor could give no theoretically coherent reason, but taste is a good self-defense. We know something is wrong. 

    Once here,
   with everything halted in midcourse,
   a gradation of solitudes
   lifts its face: the solitude that wafts
   with the slack wind stirring leaves
   and branches and the kind that costs dearly
   to reach, the solitude of wilderness
   and the kind experienced only
   by those who grip the steering wheel
   to escape from urban loneliness
   gliding over narrow highways
   to stop where the forest is most impenetrable.