I really like the Mew poem Mary posted, and it makes a good starting point for my thoughts on the poetry of quiet despair. I find namely that I can’t quite get a grip on it. Whereas it’s clear in Jeff’s excellent essay above, it’s suddenly so much harder to find my own examples of the “genre”. In the Mew poem, there’s actually a lot of hope (spring will come again) but what makes it different from a regular poem of hope is that the hope comes first and the real picture of despair comes at the end; it’s the last picture we’re left with.
Looking at one of Jeff’s example (the Kees) there isn’t much hope at all in it. One poem that comes to mind as being full of despair with no hope (unless you count the concluding anger as somehow alive and therefore hopeful in a sense) is Nemerov’s “Vacuum”:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.or...ate=2004/06/25
Another poem that might fit the genre is Frost’s “Acquainted with the night”. I’m not a huge fan of Frost, but I really like that poem. To me, it has a very quiet (too quiet?) despair in it.
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/6334-Robe...With-The-Night
Now, what about poems with the more conventional formula of presenting despair first and then a hint or message of hope at the end? Would they be included in the genre? Some of Mary Karr’s poems come to mind. The one I really love is very quiet in its despair, but I still think it’s there. It’s called “Etching of the Plague Years”:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=26991
In another poem by Mary Karr, the despair is more palpable. The title is “Field of Skulls”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=171884
And in a third poem by her, the despair is even more evident, and this poem could probably be put in the confessionalist bracket. “Limbo: Altered States”:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=171887
I really like Karr’s poems. All of them, of course, have that little note of hope or lightening at the very end, so the question is whether they do fit the poetry of quiet despair.