Comments by Distinguished Guest Amit Majmudar:
John Masefield is an example of a poet becoming immortal by writing one or two poems that are unforgettably perfect. Strange that that is all it takes--just nail one, you'll live forever--and yet we produce relentlessly, relentlessly, and most of us never do it.
And even if we do--is the poem that represents a given poet to posterity always representative of his or her oeuvre? Sometimes it's an anomalous poem that breaks through, like Dylan Thomas's villanelle--it's clear, direct, without show-offy chockablock verbiage. In other words, unlike a lot of his other verse. One of the most anthologized poems of Whitman's is the rhymed one about Lincoln, "O Captain, my Captain!" And it's quite horrible. Though Whitman has enough others that have lasted for the future to know what he "really" wrote like. Frost's permanent poems, on the other hand, are all very Frostian. Perhaps because he was so completely himself; I sense little centrifugal force at his core, which is stable. Compare Robert Lowell.
Is there any better poet of the sea in English than Masefield?
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