This is one of those poems I'd have to use the word "nice" about. Possibly even "very nice." There are whole anthologies full of this kind of stuff; and it's all very nice. It's supposed to make you feel sorry for the people in the poem, but not very deeply. It's hinting at the darkness beneath the surface of country life, but in no particularly different way than a thousand poems about rural suicide, murder, getting lost in snow storms etc, etc... Rural Tragedy Poems.
And the girl is the standard rural witchy wild-child, who can't be tamed and perhaps shouldn't, then escapes... yawn.
And the last verse sums it up oh-so-neatly, as if we haven't already got whatever point it was trying to make already. Oh yes, there are other losses than death. He might as well have written the word MORAL above that verse.
Not an objectionable poem, of course. The language is very nice, and there's no particular problems with meter or rhyme. I can't see any reason why it can't be held up as an example of how to write a good poem in meter.
Except it's dull, predictable and safe.
------------------
Steve Waling
|