One Problem We Face Comes

English Poetry Begins Whenever We Decide To Say The Modern English Language Begins, And It Extends As Far As We Decide To Say That The English Language Extends.

Modernism In Other Arts Brought Extreme Difficulty. In Poetry, The Characteristic Difficulty Imported Under The Name Of Modernism Was Obscurity. But Obscurity Could Just As Easily Be A Quality Of Metrical As Of Free Verse.

The Writing Of A Poem Is Like A Child Throwing Stones Into A Mineshaft. You Compose First, Then You Listen For The Reverberation.

It Normally Happens That If You Put Two Words Together, Or Two Syllables Together, One Of Them Will Attract More Weight, More Emphasis, Than The Other. In Other Words, Most So-called Spondees Can Be Read As Either Iambs Or Trochees.

An Aria In An Opera - Handel's 'ombra Mai Fu,' For Example - Gets Along With An Incredibly Small Number Of Words And Ideas And A Large Amount Of Variation And Repetition. That's The Beauty Of It. It's Not Taxing To The Listener's Intelligence Because If You Haven't Heard It The First Time Round, It'll Come Around Again.