Dr. Pinsky –

Might I suggest that you serve up simplicity on Tuesday mornings? Simplicity; but with depth, beauty, figurative language, spirituality, interesting form, layers of meaning, abstraction, classical allusions, moral clarity, and brevity. Is that too much to ask?

With respect, let me suggest an alternative term to "simplicity"-- a word that for me doesn't suit concepts you invoke like depth, beauty, spirituality. (Or layers of meaning!)

The word I have in mind is "plainness."

It's true that "plain" can be an unflattering word about one's face (as "simple" can be, or used to be, an unflattering word about one's mind), but-- to take the example at hand-- consider Landor's poem.

This couplet seems to me not at all "simple": as some of the early responses here indicate, the relation of Love to Grief to Time is complicated, much folded. And the idea of a sprinkling wing, with the waters of Lethe, is not exactly "simple" either, as I understand the term.

On the other hand, there's an appealing plainness to Landor's writing. A direct, unadorned quality to the three one-syllable nouns in the first line, all objects of the preposition "on"; and then the large one-syllable word, the subject of the sentence, at the beginning of the second line.

What I like about plainness-- though it is not the only kind of good writing-- is that it can (as here) express subtle, even complex matters like the nature of forgetting, with unfancy means. Like a delicious meal, Savory Goodness, made of basic ingredients.

But sometimes quite ornate writing-- moments in Donne, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Plath come to mind-- also can be gorgeous, and moving in another way. Is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" simple? Is "The Ode to a Nightingale"? Many poems of Emily Dickinson? In each case, there are moments of striking plainness, often in contrast to something rich and dense or twisted-up.

What I like about Landor's kind of simplicity or plainness here is that it varies or even undermines a cliche. ("Time flies.") It is not the other, to me lesser, kind of simplicity that embraces what is trite.

Simple and plain can be good. For me, neither term connotes the kind of complacent or false and quickly recognized quality sometimes indicated by pejorative uses of easy or glib or facile.

Um, I guess what I'm saying is: yes, but simplcity is kind of complicated?

Dr. Pinsky -

No respect is due my facetious blather, ever. But thank you for your thoughty reply.

To your point, I have to mention the reference to the bass-infested Lethe river within W. S. Landor's work this week. Calling attention to my own ignorance, it is a reference which for me required a Google search. And it is utterly essential to the meaning of the poem. So, the author has required something from me in order to derive his meaning. I am glad to look, because I love trying to digest what you serve each week. But plain? Not to folk as stupid as I.

I guess that anything, once it gets paid really close attention, gets a little less simple or plain. And the Web certainly has made simpler (or plainer) mythological stuff like "Lethe"-- and all other allusions! In the Wiki era, is any allusion or reference obscure?

(My wife has a friend named "Alethea," which I believe means something like "Forgets-Not.")

Here is a poem for the physics nobel prize winners announced today. Nils Peterson

After Reading a Book of Astrophysics
the Poet Longs for the Old Ways

Think of earth as flat, four-cornered.
Are you not more at ease here, no
longer having to dig your toes into
a diaphanous ball hurtling round
the sun? All good advice boils down
to, “ Don’t get too close to the edge.”
The philosophical may wonder why
things fall down and what holds us
up. “That’s the way it is,” the sensible
answer, “We’re balanced on the backs
of descending elephants, and the
seventh perches on a turtle,” the
religious suggest. Well, that seems
good enough, a solid answer, not
a crock of quarks and fuzzy-bits. Now
maybe we can build a house and stay.

P.S.

Yet how attractive the edge becomes
and the long fall past elephant after
elephant, and when we glance off
the turtle’s back, where are we, where?

I got Lethe right off the bat because I'm a big fan of Poe. It's a real Poe word. Of course, I thought Landor was a guy who had a cottage in upstate New York...

Sorry SG, I can’t let this slide: Not to folk as stupid as I. Not to get too Pee Wee Hermanish but if you are stupid, egad, what am I?

And RP: I didn’t think the poem was simple. I did think your explanation leading into it took away some of the joy (thank the gods for the internet) of discovery. (I know that would have been a LOT of white space though).

My own first association for the word is the first stanza of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale, " with "Lethe-wards had sunk." The Greek name is in a kind of odd relation to the English word "lethal."

HAP you raise a question I take seriously about this project of presenting "classic poems" every few weeks in Slate. Will a few sentences of commentary by me "take away the joy" as you put it? My decision, very much urged by colleagues here, is that the risk of that happening (as I'm sorry to hear it did for you) is worth it, for the gain in understanding and interest for other readers.

My aim is to brief, helpful, lively. And compared to most academic and journalistic writing about works of art, I do feel I accomplished the first of those three goals.

Robert Pinsky:

HAP you raise a question I take seriously about this project of presenting "classic poems" every few weeks in Slate. Will a few sentences of commentary by me "take away the joy" as you put it? My decision, very much urged by colleagues here, is that the risk of that happening (as I'm sorry to hear it did for you) is worth it, for the gain in understanding and interest for other readers.

My aim is to brief, helpful, lively. And compared to most academic and journalistic writing about works of art, I do feel I accomplished the first of those three goals.

Let me remind you of all the times so many here have asked you to write a note about each weeks poem. I am among them. Please do as you have mentioned and don't reconsider.

Thanks. The plan is that I will write brief introductions like this one for the older or "classic" poems I present every few weeks. (To do something like this every week, for the new poems too, would--in the context of all the other things I do and try to do-- wring me dry!)

The plan is that I will write brief introductions like this one for the older or "classic" poems I present every few weeks. (To do something like this every week, for the new poems too, would--in the context of all the other things I do and try to do-- wring me dry!)

However, it's the new poems, rather than the classics, that we need more context for.

If you don't have the time, consider asking the poets themselves to write a brief note. I know that when I read the Best American Poetry anthologies, those poets' comments at the end are often entertaining and/or enlightening.

Yes, the critical thing is that the comments come after.

Perhaps, Mr. Pinsky, you could hold off on commentary until others have expressed their views? Breslin does this to good effect.

Some of us appreciate the puzzle, the game, the exploration, and the extrapolation...we learn much from one another (about Lethe, for example) through these discussions.

Frankly, I think waltz summed it up for me. Game's over. Can't wait for Thursday.

Take care.

Mary Ann, it might be nice to ask poets who publish here to give a context to their poems, with a few sentences of prose. In fact, they are free to do that, on the Fray as a few sometimes have done.

In theory, a good idea.

But many poets would not like it at all -- I know that David Lehman has a hard time securing those endnotes some poets write to accompany their poems in the Best American Poetry anthologies.

As I have said in response to another post today, the Fray-- admirable though it is in many ways-- sometimes has a nasty or frivolous tone that already makes some poets reluctant or unwilling to publish in Slate.

I'll be candid: the Fray has been referred to as "the voice of the slush-pile," That's unjust, but possibly regulars here, responding to my weekly selection with its official endorsement, underestimate how the tone of response can make the poet feel. (Incidentally making my job of soliciting poems more difficult.)

Maybe a respectful-though-perhaps-crit­ical-or-challenging post in the Fray, addressed directly to the poet, would produce something good? Has done?

Do I emphasize the effect of anonymity too much? The poet publishes a poem with his or her name attached to it, and reads it aloud for the audio. Then, quite likely eager for response, he or she logs onto the Fray . . . and along with the real possibility of intelligent, sensitive response, there's a certain amount of static, silliness or disrespect.

Possibly I attribute to much to the online tradition of monikers and jokey sobriquets. (What is it's history?) When I see those "Real Name" indicators on Amazon, I confess, it feels like a step toward civility to me . . . or do I mean toward grown-up seriousness?

A question of manners and the history of manners, I suppose. And truly, not settled in my mind.

(My name is Robert Pinsky, and though I don't necessarily approve of this message I wrote it. And I am responsible for it.)

I'd like to second that - I like having room for instantanaeous half-baked theories, for a day or so - even if few are as cracked as mine.