May I divert from Michael's Olympics to post one of
his own brilliant pieces of analysis on Met, a critinelle in response to a villanelle by Roy Hamilton. Roy, being the gentleman and scholar that he is, took this in the proper eratospherean spirit. The tone may strike some as somewhat emphatic, but note how helpfully specific the analysis is.
It reminds me of John Hollander's brief but power-packed Rhyme's Reason, an entire book of meter and forms in which all the examples given are the poet's own. "what I grab just dribbles hand to hand and disappears:"--Kobe meets Keats.
Roy
Your poem strikes the pose of something grand,
but rumbles on too aimlessly until
its vagueness is the reason that it's panned.
The numbing, metronomic meter, and
poor pronoun usage are a weakness, still,
your poem has the bones of something grand:
there's blood and evil, lions, lambs and sand -
the makings of an epic that could thrill.
If vagueness is the reason that it's panned
work with me, sweetheart: this isn't bland
as much as pointless, bloodied and yet shrill -
the poet writes and crows of something grand,
but what I grab just dribbles hand to hand
and disappears; all noise and verbal frill:
but vagueness is no reason to expand.
First, loosen up the meter; then a stand
on what you're saying - make it clear - and kill
that pome-like pose it strikes of something grand:
the vagueness is the reason that it's panned.
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