I would argue, Peter, that Michael's closings are not a too-neat wrapping up but a lovely spin on what has come before, including that last couplet in "Machines." This to me is "closure" done well--the click of the hasp on a well made box, but the sense of something still breathing, still open. By the same token, I would say that his openings are remarkable and can teach us much about how to get into a poem. Did he develop? Well, it's an odd thing. There are poems in his first book--like "Remembering Steps to Dances Learned Last Night" and "The Tuning" that are among his very best. But a few other poems in that book did seem merely clever, and that growing sense of mortality is a development every bit as much as it is in Yeats, who had a much longer career and of course more opportunity to grow. So yes, it's tragic that Michael's development was cut short, let alone his life, but I continue to think there's more vitality and verbal elan in his work than in the work of almost anyone else of my generation.
Dave
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