I've always liked this imperfect poem for its demonstration that it's the imperfect human element that makes art attractive. Here, the oxymorons and imperfect meter and rhyme:

DELIGHT IN DISORDER.
by Robert Herrick

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction :
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat :
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Ralph's post makes me think of Alicia's fabulous "Antiblurb," on the back of Hapax. I feel like it's been posted at some point before, but what the hell, I'll paste it in:

Antiblurb

This is not necessary. This is neither
Crucial nor salvation. It is no hymn
To harmonize the choirs of seraphim,
Nor any generation's bold bellwether
Leading the flock, no iridescent feather
Dropped from the Muse's wing. It does not limn,
Or speak in tongues, or voice the mute, or dim
Outmoded theories with its fireworks. Rather

This is flawed and mortal, and its stains
Bear the evidence of taking pains.
It did not have to happen, won't illumine
The smirch of history, the future's omen.
Necessity is merely what sustains —
It's what we do not need that makes us human.

I love how the enjambment from octave to sestet enacts the sort of flaw the poem admits to having. Is it really a flaw if it helps make the point? Does that make the poem perfect or imperfect? I don't know, but I like it.

Chris

PS., Gregory, Okay, To Autumn it is. Actually, I love all Keats' major odes. My favorite part from Grecian Urn is the beginning of the last stanza, down to "as doth eternity." And the part about the sacrifice. And the beginning. And the whole thing. Actually, surely that's an "imperfect" poem, in the sense of "incomplete," since we have no idea how the end is to be punctuated--where do the quotes start and stop?

Ralph,

I love the Herrick. The brilliant start, the hopeless middle, the distracted end. Alas, everything I love about Herrick, and all of his faults, displayed in a single piece!

Phillip, I've chucked the whole idea of perfect, and replaced it with "lovely little piece of work." My problem is that I agree with Henry: "Literature bores me, especially great literature..."

It's a sign of my bad character that I have a fondness for small medallions. So I prefer things like J. V. Cunningham:

*********************

For My Contemporaries


How time reverses
The proud in heart!
I now make verses
Who aimed at art.

But I sleep well.
Ambitious boys
Whose big lines swell
With spiritual noise,

Despise me not!
And be not queasy
To praise somewhat:
Verse is not easy.

But rage who will.
Time that procured me
Good sense and skill
Of madness cured me.

*************************

Now, there's a pretty little thing. Gorgeous. And every time we go over the George Washington Bridge, my wife insists I recite Paul Goodman's little ditty to her:

*************************

The Lordly Hudson

"Driver, what stream is it?" I asked, well knowing
it was our lordly Hudson hardly flowing.
"It is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing,"
he said, under the green-grown cliffs."

Be still, heart! No one needs
your passionate suffrage to select this glory,
this is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing
under the green-grown cliffs.

"Driver, has this a peer in Europe or the East?"
"No, no!" he said. Home! Home!
Be quiet, heart! This is our lordly Hudson
and has no peer in Europe or the east.

This is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing
under the green-grown cliffs
and has no peer in Europe or the East.
Be quiet, heart! Home! Home!

*****************************

It's funny what sticks in our heads. Little medallions, silly small things. Charming.

Thanks,

Bill

I've always loved that Goodman poem, though I'm hard pressed to say why.

Another poem that praises the perfection of imperfection is Gerard Manley Hopkin's
"Pied Beauty"; probably it's so well known that everyone is sick of it, but just in
case that is not the case, here it is (despite it's religious professions, I've always
considered it a poem in praise of anarchy):

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.

Here's a poem that I'm sure 100% of us know well. Certainly a candidate for the perfect poem.


Western Wind

Oh western wind, when wilt thou blow,
That the small rain down can rain.
Christ! That my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

Earlier version:

Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Chryste, that my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde againe.

Ted Hughes referred to this as "that flawless poem from his sixteenth year":

Encounter with a God

Ono-no-komache the poetess
sat on the ground among her flowers,
sat in her delicate-patterned dress
thinking of the rowers,
thinking of the god Daikoku.

Thinking of the rock pool
and carp in the waterfall at night.
Daikoku in accordance with the rule
is beautiful, she said, with a slight
tendency to angles.

But Daikoku came
who had been drinking all night
with the greenish gods of chance and fame.
He was rotund standing in the moonlight,
with a round, white paunch.

Who said
I am not beautiful,
I do not wish to be wonderfully made,
I am intoxicated dutiful daughter,
and I will not be in a poem.

But the poetess sat still
holding her head and making verses:
'How intricate and peculiarly well-
arranged the symmetrical belly-purses
of lord Daikoku.'

Keith Douglas

For myself, I'd pick M.Moore's The Steeple Jack, a poem from which you could, if necessary, re-constitute the universe, just add water. It is perfect in the sense that it says what needs to be said, with nothing extra.

If I maybe candid, I don't especially like the Merwin. The first few lines sound a bit sententious to me -- something to do with the alliteration and the anapestic rhythm. And there's something odd about the phrasing "and turn over slightly". But I like the part where he compares looking upward through the water to leaning back on a tree-swing. Sorry, I feel quite disgusted with how very little poetry I honestly like. I don't get most of it.

Heck, I think I'll just post one of my all-time favorites:

American Primitive
by William Jay Smith


Look at him there in his stovepipe hat,
His high-top shoes, and his handsome collar;
Only my Daddy could look like that,
And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar.

The screen door bangs, and it sounds so funny -
There he is in a shower of gold;
His pockets are stuffed with folding money,
His lips are blue, and his hands feel cold.

He hangs in the hall by his black cravat,
The ladies faint, and the children holler:
Only my Daddy could look like that,
And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar.
.