[New-Poetry] Re: Rating the Housman

[Bob Grumman]

> (The second stanza may be a classic example of filling things out for 
> sake of rime scheme. The information is all given in first two 
> lines, but then is restated by reversing the mental math. It begins to 
> sound a bit like one of those math word problems you were tested with 
> in grade school: "If one train traveling west left Cleveland at 10 
> o'clock, traveling 100 miles per hour, and twenty minutes later 
> another train left Chicago traveling east...)
Haw, James, I consider the second stanza to be what makes this poem 
great.  Pretty much for the reasons you find it poor, although I don't 
think it fills things out for the sake of the rhyme scheme.  The first 
two lines tell us the speaker is 20.  It doesn't tell us that leaves him 
50 more.  We can do the arithmetic, yes, but the poet is directing us 
from the age of the poet to how many years he has left.  He's making 
that the subject.

--Bob