[Robin-Kemp]

I was just reading various poets' books this morning, and David Yezzi's The Hidden Model really rang some bells with me.

When you look at the first few, that wonderful "Woman Holding a Fox," which I love, and "Chinese New Year," "Chekovian Landscape," and "Casco Passage," he seems to be playing with the stanza forms. I don't recognize them, and they don't seem to incorporate endrhyme the way that "Exit Pursued" and "His Boat" do.

What's the story here with the stanza shapes?

Robin

[Clay Stockton]

Haven't seen the book, but could they be things like alcaics or sapphics?

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Can't say I'm fond of Yezzi's writing, though I like the fox metaphor.

As I recall, his meter in that poem was loosely iambic, with a beat pattern of 5-7-7-4-5(?) per stanza. No formal 'form' that I'm aware of. I wasn't keen on some of his line breaks, and the way he indented the lines seemd, at times, distracting.

Maybe he just liked the visual aspect of formatting the stanzas in that manner. I don't think it did anything for the poem itself.

[Meredith Bergmann]

I love "Woman Holding a Fox", too. The lines seem to be elegant iambic, with some slight variations. Each stanza begins with a pentameter line as if to assert clarity, as nearly each stanza adds a new bit to the narrative in a conversational way. It's as if the poem's speaker draws a breath between most stanzas.

The stanzas are patterned 5-7-7-4-7. I like the variation in length of the iambic line, as this gives him the opportunity to emphasize a detail ("Her glasses lost in tufted grass") or a phrase. And when you read the poem again, it's interesting to see how the shorter phrases tell the story in a condensed form.

He's a very deliberate writer and a very careful craftsman, and he may be using these indents to evoke disrupted, rather than polished form... I don't know.

For those who don't yet like his work, what about his "Upon Julia's Breasts"? It's a masterful hoot.

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Meredith

Thanks for correcting the count on the last line. I couldn't remember if it was 5 or 7 and was too lazy to check.

What do you mean, "who don't yet like him"? Unless he changes his style of writing; I doubt I'll change my tastes in poetry. *grin*

[Meredith Bergmann]

Jerry- I'm not trying to urge you to read a poet you dislike. Life's too short, once your mind is really made up.

I thought some other people might read this, look up the poems mentioned above my post, and miss "Upon Julia's Breasts", which is formally self-evident and rigorous in addition to being delightful.

[Maryann Corbett]

Testing to see if any thread on this board will accept posts.

Maryann

[winter]

I don't know Yezzi's work, but I stumbled across a review of The Hidden Model in The Contemporary Review, which makes it sound really interesting.

A few quotes from it:

"Next to the childish fracturing that passes for linguistic energy in so much contemporary poetry, Yezzi’s carefully deceptive syntax seems like the work of an adult, one who knows the language so thoroughly he is able to transform it at will..."

"Yezzi seduces with lavishness, before surprising with seriousness..."

"Yezzi brings together beauty and skepticism, eloquence and doubt, the visual and the verbal. Reading him reminds us that poetry is capable of the most subtle perception and the most civilized thought, if only a poet takes himself and the art seriously enough to achieve them..."