Mezey's brilliant intro to his new Selected brings such insight into Robinson's dark world that it lends new meaning to the phrase "It takes a village." North Dakota leads the nation in suicide and alcoholism, and many a downcast friend of mine would mutter "There are no farmers anymore." This poem is so spare, so stark that we have no "poetic image" until the final quatrain. How would the young Yeats, EAR's exact contemporary have written it?
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Bore on its breast a woman's tear
Which vanished in the moonless night?
But Yeats would write nothing this powerful for many years.
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