It's a keenness of perception, a shrewdness that won't fail. / Or perhaps it's a metropolis in a lengthy old Norse tale?

Brilliant, as ideas - creatively inspired, far from mundane. / (It sounds like where you'd find such ideas: inside some Einstein's brain.)

"As scented candles go, this one's no good; it smells like sour curds!" / After some thought, I agreed with you there. (What I did is in the sound of your words.)

A washing machine, as it gets them clean, will do this to pants and shirt. / A politician will do this as well, if faced with political dirt.

The discos known as "stop-stops" came across as rather lame. / The owners pulled out all the stops and assigned this better name.

So here I am in the dugout. You might think I'll be soon at bat. / But you'd be wrong, for I'm sitting in this. The lake is where I'm at.

If you start with a tryout / And then throw the Y out, / You'll transform the audition / Into this target of fishin'!

It's housed in housed, it's infused in infused; / it finishes soused, but winds up amused. / This four-letter combo is hard to avoid. The word itself? Well, it's quite simply... employed.