Odyssey and Other Poems, 2nd Edition

Contemporary poetry is dominated by an adherence to the poetics of

Indeterminacy, in which tuneless chaos prevails over music and meaning.

In their determination to subvert the traditional conventions of poetry,

contemporary poets dismiss, in their practice, all the time-honored devices

that make poetry, such as, for example, rhythm and rhyme, symbol

and song. That is to say, they dismiss Auden's famous formulation that

poetry is "memorable speech"--a unique and compelling combination of

sound an...