>>Here's an unspecific, specific question -- why do you suppose the sort of energy and bloody good fun evident in your posted sequence is so rare to find in poetry these days ?
Rare? Perhaps. Our new laureate, Billy Collins, is great fun, and there's always Wendy Cope (whose new book can be ordered from amazon.com.uk). I do believe that we're still laboring under the kind of high seriousness preached by Mr. Matthew Arnold, and that poetry that evokes a humorous response is somehow relegated to second-class citizenship. But certainly there's a great deal of fun in Eliot, Millay, Auden, Hope, Wilbur, Hecht, and others.
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