Thanks to Janet Holmes at Humanophone for introducing me to the poetry of Devin Johnston. Besides the sample she presents, there are more poems of his here, here, here, and here, for starters. Unusual venues for a poet as traditional as he is—lots of dimeter and tetrameter, and rhyme's not scarce. Holmes compares him to "John Betjeman (of all people)," and remarks on his "subtle use of metrics & formalities that I'd thought disappeared from current usage." Heh.
Betjeman, by the way, was a damned good poet (though decidedly not a great poet) and is very unfairly neglected. There's a brief discussion of his poetry at Eratosphere's "Musing on Mastery" forum.
Loren Webster has heroically read all 1,775 of Emily Dickinson's poems in the last 3 weeks and has, as usual, interesting things to say. The easiest way to read all of it is probably to read In a Dark Time's February and March archives. One thing sensibly not mentioned is her punctuation, so often cited as evidence of her originality and non-conformity. It ain't. For most of the 19th century punctuation was a matter of "house style," meaning the publishers determined how it would be done. Authors had little say in it and usually didn't care. Even so, here's part of the first stanza of Poe's "Romance" as it was published:
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—a most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.
There—I just proposed a new convention: italicize blog titles.
Jonathan Mayhew has also been doing a lot of reading: a book of poems a day. One last week was Frost's early A Boy's Will. In that day's post he disparages—no, belittles— a poem from another book, the wonderful "Mending Wall," remarking "That moralizing tendency in Frost is hard to take."
Just what is "moralizing" about that poem? The speaker tells how he tried and failed to convince his neighbor that there's no use doing something just because we've always done it. If there's a moral there, I'd have thought it's one the avant garde would embrace.
Update: In the comments below Jonathan clarified his objection, and I withdraw my objection to his objection. I don't think the speaker's a shit, though.
6:43:16 PM 
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