I like the surprising interruption of "suddenly" a lot; it is like watching something form before your eyes. I also like the inversion with "shaken" earlier in the stanza.
I think the contemporary obsession with having a poem's syntax exactly mirror spoken syntax is wrong-headed. Yes, we don't want absurd archaic inversions wrenched solely for the rhyme--and that is why we harp on this on the boards, because some folks come here not even aware that they are using an outmoded convention. But things can be gained by "unnatural" syntax that cannot be gained otherwise. And let us not forget that poetry is artificial. People do not speak in intricate rhymed stanzas of 4, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2. The thing is to give an impression of nature, a versimilitude, not sterile documentation. Does "take shape suddenly" have any of the drama of "take/ suddenly shape" -- a sort of intake or holding of breath--(and with that enjambment too)?
And indeed, we do not even really speak in logical syntax all the time, particularly when we are surprised, or upset, or startled, or amazed.
As Edward Thomas says, poetry's goal is not to reproduce speech, but reproduce the effect of speech:
"literature . . . is to make words of such spirit, and arrange them in such a manner, that they will do all that a speaker can do by innumerable gestures and their innumerable shades, by tone and pitch of voice, by speed, by pauses, by all that he was and all that he will become."
|
Linear Mode
