Christof21 Jun 2007

The villanelle is tough little nut to crack and i think this pretty damn good. I don't really like 'ev'ry' - I think the metre would make the syllabic count of the word clear, and it would be nice not to have that archaism. But it's only a small thing and it's made up for by 'wet silty clay' - you've obviously been digging in my garden. Not wanting to get pulled into the British pomposity argument above but - really, the Brits don't have the monopoly on pomposity. Our most pompous novelists are laugh riots next to Dom de Lillo or Sinclair Lewis and as for linguistic rigidity - have you seen the New Yorker? It's like Edith Wharton never died.