The first three couplets bespeak E.A. Robinson, as do the last two, and I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the fifth. That fine tone and its completely accessible story, which I agree has a poignant and compelling turn to it, comes to a screeching halt in the fourth couplet (until it resumes again in the later couplets). The fourth couplet, instead of following the story, introduces the narrator's conclusion/observation, hence the introductory word "Thus" (which itself interrupts the tone and story line) followed by a syntactical mess which is apparently intended to carry the entire weight of the poem's meaning. I don't know why the poet found it necessary to rhyme this couplet. And beyond the fact that I could make no sense of it, it introduces a fundamentally different tone into the poem, a different method, if you will. I didn't trust it. Wells Burgess

This one is just too vague for me. Feels a bit dated, as modernism can.

As such, not a sonnet.
As such, not a poem.
As such, not a simile.
As such, not a smile.
A smirk? Maybe.
But don't forget the brilliant extra random spaces. That's right kids, trash Shakespeare; instead you need a Manuel for HTML, that's where the real poetry is found. Don't get me wrong, I 'get' the value of the spacing in Mallarme's "The Sea" or the late Apollinaire work; but this is meaningless. Maybe the four dots could be where the real poem is supposed to go. Too bad it's not there. Does "now" (un-capitalized) rhyme with "Now" (capitalized)? Finally we come to the Deep Philosophical Climax with the Great Abstractions, "This Man needs to Know... to Live... Somehow." I can almost hear William Shantner reading it on an out-take of Star Trek. So poetic!


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I think I got the title of the Mallarme wrong, I think it's "A Toss of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance" (I haven't seen most of my books in over half of a year, if they still exist at all). I kind of remember Debussy being inspired to write some music by Mallarme's poems.

I want to like this sonnet.
RM