Word: epithalamion
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...that his rhythm and such even begin to account for Tate's power. He is master of the mot juste. "Epithalamion for Tyler" honors a friend woh has sewn a pig's ear to his sofa, and with it has "spirited" talks; no other word could have attributed to the friend the same aspect of intelligent playfulness. Then, too, Tate never dulls our brains or arouses our distrust by "poeticism," by obsolete ploys. He even lampoons such lapses of tact, as he prepares to hit us: with some genuine midcentury currency, as in, "The Cages...
...best thing in this month's Advocate is Robert Dawson's long poem "Epithalamion." It's a love poem ("epithalamion" means marriage song), characterized by grace, calmson, and an unqualified technical mastery. The poem has dramatic setting--an evening in the city--and it keeps to it. Mr. Dawson also uses splashes of other poets with gay sensitivity. Echoes of Hart Crane's gulls and city are there, for example; Eliot's "Prufrock" turns...
Sidney Goldfarb's "Three Cities" stands in marked contrast to "Epithalamion." "Three Cities" isn't about anything, and it has no setting or scene to tell a story. Moreover, its language quickly flattens into undistinguished exclamation, apparently trying to bully us into emotion...
...dull at first reading, the latter perhaps not dull before the second or third reading. The two traits well combined make for what the uninitiated call good writing; they are best combined here in an excerpt from a picaresque novel by Richard Robinson, and in at least two poems, "Epithalamion, 4 A.M." by Stephen Sandy, and "To Speed and Greta" by Richard Sommer...
...Epithalamion, 4 A.M.," Sandy's poem, sings softly but firmly of the love of a bride and bridegroom, of dawn, joy, time, life, and the fear of death or the end of a moment. That's a large demand to make of any poem, but Sandy succeeds. A few metaphoric rough spots briefly mar the first three stanzas, but the last four rise evenly to a climax of considerable force, thanks to careful variations of rhythm combined with a consistent metaphor...