[RCL]

It continues to fascinate me that she’s almost slavish to fixed quatrain variations and regular meter but is so tentative by contrast with her punctuation and rhyme—in effect, counterpoints of fixed and fluid, certainty/uncertainty/skepticism in so many of her poems. Added: when I say "tentative," I mean she intends to be slant with punctuation and rhyme.

If I were still stupefied in academe, I’d write a right nice note on “Bi-polar Structures in E.D.’s Poetry.”

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Imagine the crits of this in this neighborhood. Suppression of caps. Screwing with the dashes that displace common practice, a knee-jerk cry of “identity!” at the most important rhyme in the poem: Ground/Ground. . . for example.