Those are wonderfully bold enjambments at the very beginning and very end, separating the adjective (delicious/wind-bellowed) from the noun (Smile/Sails), which in turn is a displaced beat. Often when I come across a poet attempting that, it sounds clumsy to me - but here it works just beautifully!
None of the odd numbered lines rhyme, do they? But I feel the matching numbered odd lines from each stanza have a nice progression?
And yes, it's the beginning of each quatrain that's unrhymed --- but each of those lines does move things forward, with a new conceit for that shared intimate silence. The poem moves like a Shakespearean sonnet (I'm thinking especially of 73), unfolding an idea quatrain by quatrain, but stopping short of fulfilling the form.
That's a great observation about the enjambments. I tend to love what I think of as the "strong attack" at the start of a line, i.e. beginning what's otherwise a fairly iambic line on a stressed, rather than an unstressed syllable (a think I frequently do myself and simply do not worry about that lost syllable!).
I think it was Theodore Roethke, a lot later, who maintained that lines ought both to start and to end on strong words, which usually ends up meaning stressed syllables --- I think he said that you ought to be able to read down the both the left and right margins of the poem, and the words would make almost their own poem (rather than being, on the left side, just articles and prepositions).
This obviously messes with strict meter, but it's a rule I've always had in mind. Here Deutsch obviously doesn't really do that (nor is she being all that metrically strict, though some lines, such as line 4, are perfectly straightforward iambic pentameter), but her lines that begin with stresses --- like the change from line 1 to line 2 --- are really striking and satisfying, I think, little moments of drama in what is largely --- for obvious reasons --- a quiet poem.
Those are wonderfully bold enjambments at the very beginning and very end, separating the adjective (delicious/wind-bellowed) from the noun (Smile/Sails), which in turn is a displaced beat. Often when I come across a poet attempting that, it sounds clumsy to me - but here it works just beautifully!
None of the odd numbered lines rhyme, do they? But I feel the matching numbered odd lines from each stanza have a nice progression?
delicious/departure/evening
dreaming/meadow/wind-bellowed
And yes, it's the beginning of each quatrain that's unrhymed --- but each of those lines does move things forward, with a new conceit for that shared intimate silence. The poem moves like a Shakespearean sonnet (I'm thinking especially of 73), unfolding an idea quatrain by quatrain, but stopping short of fulfilling the form.
That's a great observation about the enjambments. I tend to love what I think of as the "strong attack" at the start of a line, i.e. beginning what's otherwise a fairly iambic line on a stressed, rather than an unstressed syllable (a think I frequently do myself and simply do not worry about that lost syllable!).
I think it was Theodore Roethke, a lot later, who maintained that lines ought both to start and to end on strong words, which usually ends up meaning stressed syllables --- I think he said that you ought to be able to read down the both the left and right margins of the poem, and the words would make almost their own poem (rather than being, on the left side, just articles and prepositions).
This obviously messes with strict meter, but it's a rule I've always had in mind. Here Deutsch obviously doesn't really do that (nor is she being all that metrically strict, though some lines, such as line 4, are perfectly straightforward iambic pentameter), but her lines that begin with stresses --- like the change from line 1 to line 2 --- are really striking and satisfying, I think, little moments of drama in what is largely --- for obvious reasons --- a quiet poem.
Thank you for this provocative poem -- beautifully paired with that lovely picture. I'll be thinking about this one all day!
I didn't know her poems at all until a couple of years ago, but the very early ones I've read are really marvelous.