James Longenbach: Tone Poems (July 2009)

James Longenbach considers how poetic series that are not governed by narrative or syntactical cohesion can still make convincing wholes.  Through close readings of Pound’s “Villanelle, the Psychological Hour,” Eliot’s The Wasteland, and Susan Howe’s “Silence Wager Stories,” he shows how each of these poems uses tone to guide the reader through its disparate and open-ended sections.