Curtis,
I think we're actually agreeing here. I DON'T
believe simply writing something metrically makes
it any good at all--but didn't I say that? (I thought
I did.) The distinction for me lies between
necessary and sufficient--logical categories.
Lord, but there must be thousands of rotten poems
written in meter and rhyme. Without the spark of
life (define as you like), they ain't gonna make it.
Curtis,somewhat off the subject (if any poor soul is still
reading this thread after the withdrawal of the Lariat),
how's about we try W. S. Merwin's very first book,
the Yale winner from 1952, and use his first poem in
that book as a kind of test case? It's called
"Anabasis I," and although I've had a good long (second)
tug on Richard Howard's pipe (i.e., his comments on the poem),
and although I have gone over the piece some five or six times
now, I'm no better off in trying to understand it than
before. You mention a liking for Auden (whose work I
greatly admire--come to think of it, so does Dave
Mason). Merwin seems to have adopted the Audenesque
mode of the early 30s, where so much was hidden in
psycho-sexual-political allegory. Try following
that 24-year old premature Master's (I mean Merwin's!)
syntax and punctuation, his appositives and kernels, and see if you can decipher whatever it is that's going on amidst the slant rhymes and rhymes on non-stressed syllables.
I'd be very curious as to the results of your efforts.
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