I'd delighted by the new flurry of interest in this thread, hooray! Let's see. First of all: Mary, I will absolutely want to join you in a discussion about Swenson. I think there might be something I could frame in terms of how wonderfully "formed" her poems are, and yet she rarely, if ever, writes in the familiar, traditional forms. Lemme think on how that might be worded. (Suggestions welcome!)

Second-- yes Wilbur; absolutely Wilbur. I was flipping through his Collected looking for my favorites, and the endings of poem after poem kept stopping me in my tracks. But I think my two faves are still these:

1. Last stanza of "Year's End":
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

2. Last stanza of "A Courtyard Thaw"
This spring was neither fierce nor gay;
This summary autumn fell without a tear:
No tinkling music-box can play
The slow, deep-grounded masses of the year.

Someone earlier mentioned "Part of a Letter":
"A girl had gold on her tongue, and gave this answer:
Ca, c'est l'acacia."
--and I can't forget to include that much-anthologized "Digging for China":
"All that I saw was China, China, China." Thanks much, Margaret.

And Susan, you must send that excellent cento to Theresa Welford, who's in the process of developing an anthology of centos. Her email: welfordtm@georgiasouthern.edu. I agree that it's fascinating how the use of last lines makes for an unusually resolute PACE, doesn't it?-- and that sense of inevitability you refer to. Thanks for posting.

Marilyn

Marilyn--nice to meet you at West Chester, thanks for signing your Aralia book for me.

I've always thought that "Preludes" is a lovely, stunning poem with powerful images. I am intrigued by his shifting use of pronouns and the haunting picture of shabby London in the early part of the century. Then Eliot ends the poem with the lines

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Now what the hell does that mean and how does it relate to the rest of the poem? It's almost like Eliot thought he was being too clear and had to throw some enigmatic lines in at the end. "Ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots" is related to some of the subject matter dealt with earlier in the poem--the urban poor. But it seems like a silly ending that departs from the cumulative energy of the poem and ends it on a note of banality.

I think the last six lines of Sam Gwynn's "Body Bags" are one of THE exemplary sonnet endings, ever, ever, especially the last 2 1/2 lines. He makes the turn, sews it up, and shuts it down in a way that seared those lines into my refuses-to-memorize brain:

...The piece of chalk
Splinters and flakes in fragments as I write,
To settle in the tray, where all the dust is.

Robin

Great cento, Susan!

I've always thought "wrangling" one of the great word choices ever (last line of "Year's End").

Thanks, Sam and Marilyn. I have submitted the cento to Welford's anthology. Ironically, it took me more hours to write that cento than any of my own poems, and there's not a word of mine in it except the title.

Susan

That's ok, Susan. When I showed "Approaching . . ." to a friend, he said, "This may be your best poem."

Is anyone familiar with those breathtakingly gorgeous "Womanhood" sonnets from Gwendolyn Brooks' Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen--namely "[What shall I give my children who are poor?}?" It's just so lovely that I must need quote the whole sonnet,

What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and no velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.
But I lack access to my proper stone.
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.

Oddly enough, I hold the notion that there are not great poems, only poems that move me greatly. This sonnet moves me greatly, and the last two lines make for a magnificent ending. Am I waxing too much over these lines?