"I think Chesterton's point is fair enough: how the hell can a poet who glimpses someone from a train know she's a woman "whom nobody loves"? There's a definite cultural arrogance there: I'm a poet and I know the right way to walk through a field - and I can prove my superior sensitivity by writing a triolet about it."
—Gregory
And it's not merely "cultural arrogance," Gregory—it's personal arrogance, in fact contempt. Cornford or the narrator assumes the woman is unloved, and why? Because she is wearing gloves and fat? How absurd! There are many reasons to be wearing gloves in a field, just as there are many reasons to wear boots in a field--not everyone is insensitive to nettles, thorns and allergies.
As I recall, the fields is England have lots of stickers of some kind. Nettles? I've forgotten what they were. In any case, both the Housman and the Chesterton are favorites.
David, you said "using the fat white woman to personify her own failings as she saw them."
1. She could only guess at the woman's "failings as she saw them." I agree with Gregory that the point of view is smugly condescending & all the more so because it's totally a shot in the dark from a whizzing train.
2. The phrase "personify her own failings as she saw them": what on earth does that mean, David? Can anyone personify their own failings as they see them? How is that done? Perhaps that is, after all, what John Lennon meant by posing for the camera sloshed with a kotex on his head. Or what Mark Chapman meant by shooting Lennon?
Terese
PS. I agree the great majority of villanelles and triolets come off as mere exercises. I'd like to see more inventiveness in form.
PS 2: I've edited to change "He" to "She." Leaving "2" as is because it's an interesting question.
[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited November 19, 2006).]
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