I don't think I want to get involved in this (I
wandered into this room by accident in any case),
but I'm glad Alicia pointed out that the first
Stevens poem, a sample of free verse mastery, is
not in free verse at all but in meter; and so is
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm
for that matter. Perhaps his greatest poem,
Sunday Morning, is in the strictest iambic
pentameter. A good example of his mastery in
"free verse" is The Snow Man---a wonderful
poem, often misinterpreted.
And like any good poet, he can't be blamed for
those he has influenced. Ashbery, a poet I find
mostly frivolous and unbearably cute, derives from
him in part, but so does Donald Justice
|