You said a lot to discuss, Geof--interestingly, although I don't think I wholly agree with much of it, not that I wholly disagree with any of it. Just two observations: (1) oddly (to me, at any rate), you seem to be discussing poetry as an English professor would--by limiting your discussion to the kind of poetry universal 150 years ago--as when you speak of the necessity of a poet's concerning himself with sound; (2) sound can be irrelevant in a successful poem, as in Saroyan's "lighght" or van den Heuvel's "tundra"--unless we agree than any word sounds good; my real point here is that, for me, a failed poem is not one that fails to do anything auditorily, or metaphorically, or conceptually, or syntactically, or visually, or et ceterally interesting but simply one that engages us in some way and, regardless of what it doesn't do, does do one significant verbal or verbo-whatever thing no other poem does to achieve its central aesthetic effect.
A pwoermd of yours I got in the mail just today does this for me: "surfhiss." It's got great sound, but even if it didn't, it'd be a successful poem. Actually, it sort of works against what I've been saying because it does several things effectively. Sound, metaphor, concept, form, linguistic effect. . . . "tundra" makes my point better, for it only does one thing, act as a metaphor. It is no more auditorally effective than any other word would be. I think many successful conventional haiku are also without any particular auditory value. Here's one by Issa from my book: "If my grumbling wife/ were still alive, I just might/ enjoy tonight's moon." I claim there's nothing special about its sound--although you can pick out nice details of sound from it, like to/moon--but what text can you not do the same with?
A bit of a babble, but good enough for here! I liked Geof's poem so much, I stole it for use in my exercise at Paint Shop yesterday:
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