Brooks Haxton: Rhythmic Plot (July 2004)

Brooks Haxton explores the rhythmic structures of “The Sick Rose” by William Blake, Poem #328 by Emily Dickinson, and the flower passage from Milton’s Lycidas to show how each poet manages his or her rhythmic template to create drama and tension; the drama produced by rhythmic pattern and its expressive disruptions, Haxton argues, is not decorative but rather central to the meanings the poems convey.