Michael Dirda: "Five Propositions About Poetry" - In a very
general sense, poets tend to use language in two ways: the
artful or the natural. Either they transmute their thoughts
through metaphor, striking imagery, or unusual syntax into
something rich and strange; or they pack their meaning into what
Wordsworth famously called the language really used by men (and
women). On the one hand, Wallace Stevens, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
and Jorie Graham; on the other, William Carlos Williams,
Archilochos, and Billy Collins. Most poets opt for flash and
filigree—after all, "O, for a beaker full of the warm South, /
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene" (Keats) sounds like
poetry. It takes real confidence, and sure judgment, to set down
words as simple and deeply moving as "Pray, undo this button"
(Shakespeare). - Where a "Complete Poems" is a monument, a
"Selected Poems" is an invitation, a sometimes needed icebreaker
for shy new readers. In other words, most of us. Just as
expository prose generally aims to ingra