Of course "New Criticism" is not the only mode in which thoroughness can take place.  However thoroughness occurs is lovely to me.  Rachel Blau De Plessis is not necessarily a New Critic, and her essays tend towards the splendidly thorough!  Amartya Sen (not a lit-crit for the most part, true), if anything, downplays the importance of language--and he too is soooooo thorough.  I suppose all I'm arguing for is the delight I experience when people take the effort to substantiate their claims, to do the difficult work of explanation/connection, as opposed to relying almost entirely on the "gesture."  I do not, as is likely implicitly clear,  have much enthusiasm for innovative criticism.  Yes, poem is a porous boundary, but I do not want what is more than less a poem to serve as replacement for academic/expository/argumentative prose.  Manifestos (with O'Hara and Warhol as exceptions (and likely others I have not read)), grin, ought to go jumping off the nearest cliff. Funnily, I love impressionism when it comes to paintings.  And I often find non-contemporary belles lettres charming.