Poet's Choice
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One kind of poetry registers the physical world: words arranged to communicate the emotional power of the senses, the feeling of a visible reality. A different kind of poetry concentrates more strikingly on expressiveness: words arranged to create a voice, the feeling of a particular sensibility.
The distinction is approximate, a matter of emphasis. The two categories overlap, strikingly so in the poems of James Schuyler, which are attentive to the evidence of the senses but with a distinctive personality. In "Evening," Schuyler emphasizes what he sees while also reflecting on it in his distinctive way:
The black marble mantelpiece
reflects a green lamp and a white.
Above it, two red candles
and a dish of fruit, painted on velvet.
What bush is that, beside the door
that faces east, that will not loose its leaves?
Snowberry, I guess. And what kind of maple
fights the evening wind to keep some of its leaves?
A few fly by. An electric heater
hums and drowns out the evening wind.
