My last post of the day, I promise.
> Just to add to the discussion. I had lunch yesterday with Helen Vendler
> at Harvard, probably the greatest writer on poetry in English alive
> )magisterial books on Shakspeareøs sonnets, Keatsøs odes, Wallace
> Stevens, and much much more, and more coming on the 20C long poem). She
> thinks PF a great poem, unqualifiedly.
By a non-strange coincidence, I was thinking about Charles
Wallace's comparisons of Shade to Frost and Ford, and about what
poets of the period I'd compare to Shade in his relentless
wit and wordplay. The best I came up with were Anthony
Hecht and James Merrill. Helen Vendler, as I understand it,
fervently admires Merrill's work. Maybe it's not any kind of
coincidence that she also admires PF so much.
I can't help mentioning that Merrill also wrote extensively
about life after death, and in so doing provided stupendous
or stupefying evidence for those who distinguish poetry (parts
of "The Book of Ephraim" and "The Will") from verse (/Mirabell/,
/Scripts for the Pageant/). Sorry, just my opinion and I know
it's off topic.
Jerry Friedman