non-sequiturs and the composition
So I have been reading the British writer Freda Downie's Collected Poems. She only had three verse books in her writing career, but they were (and are) highly regarded. And, I will add my voice to that in saying they are quite a pleasure to read. In the general, I would say the average British versifier seems better at the art than the average U.S. versifier; but then it very much seems they take the aural and verbal aspects of verse much more seriously over there than over here. Over here writers seem more concerned with their politics, or their diary.
Thus, in going through Downie, it is not unknown to come upon a stanza like this, the close of "The Lesson," about a boy not so good at his piano lessons, wishing he were elsewhere:
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And when she turned away to mark his music, He sighed and looked to the window to see His bicycle gleaming in the early dusk Against the rain-wet trunk of the apple tree. |
Just to point out, note she does not – here or elsewhere in the verse – say, overtly, he wishes he were elsewhere. She puts the idea in the image of the bicycle against the tree, of the boy's focus being on the bicycle, not upon his lessons. Good imagist practice; which is on that point to say good poetic practice. But also, the language, though formal, simply glides. The formality works toward the overall sound rather than putting strictures on it. It creates an aural effect out of the stanza, not just the sound of some short string of words (as with throwing in some consonance in a verse that otherwise ignores sound).
