I'm always curious how much this is a formal choice (the poet selecting a technique that's appropriate to the material at hand) and how much it's a function of character, an expression of a way of seeing the world.

Interesting comment, Mark, considering what I have read of the bios of Kunitz and Roethke.

Mark's description of the two poems seems accurate to me. As I remember the story as Stanley Kunitz tells it, after an explicitly, candidly anti-semitic rejection at Harvard-- he was the shining star undergraduate English major there, seemed sure to get a teaching fellowship, was bewildered that his name wasn't on the list, then his advisor told him with a chuckle that of course Harvard students wouldn't want to be taught English by a Jew, cldn't he forsee that?-- Stanley vowed never to teach again, or go near an English Department.

But many years later, when Roethke was getting sick, teaching at Bennington, he told the Bennington people they should hire Stanley Kunitz to take over his courses. And that's how Kunitz began teaching, after all.

A n encouraging story about these two quite different people, and poets.

*lurker surfaces*
It's funny that in the discussion, a woman's poem wasn't the first cited, because I bet we use "witchy" incantatory devices most often...and traditionally our roles have put us in closer and longer proximity to nursery rhymes. Sexton and Plath are the first accused that come to my mind ("and my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack") but Dorothy Parker (hell yeah I'll put her in such company) is the biggest offender.

But that observation is terribly sexist of me, isn't it. ;)

BTW this may be against the rules, but I'm doing poems for charity over at my blog; write a poem and I donate a dollar (this year, to Appalachian Trail maintenance). Drain my resources: capitolcougar.blogspot.com.