Thanks Clive and Roger. I have reservations about the poem. It was written a quarter century ago, then slashed from pentameter to tetrameter by the EfH as we prepared Very Far North for publication. Its inspiration is Pound: "Li Po also died a drunk./ He tried to embrace a moon/ in the Yellow River." So much for Tim not loving vers libre. But I think every serious poet hates his juvenilia. I once read some of Wilbur's first book to him and Charlee, and he said "Tim, you make it sound pretty good." At the time I wrote Drowned Immortal it might have been my best poem, but it still sticks in my craw that Alan cut it to tetrameter. And that at 26 I hadn't sense enough to choose the proper measure.
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