reading more, i think he was saving up energy for his later poems. there's another thing i've found that he does well, but i don't really want to copy whole sonnet into here.
but the more i read, the more i'm finding lines that are almost gothic: "And lays to view my vulture-gnawn heart open". And, of course, he wrote "The Complaint of Rosamund", which certainly has that weirdness and power I was talking about.
(i need a better word for what i mean by weirdness. i think i picked it up from a discussion i had w/ alex young years ago, in my first 20th century poetry class.
freshman i was complaining about the way some of the poets we were reading would use lines that didn't make any sense, and young pointed out that there were a handful of weird lines in yeats and keats and so on and claimed that more contemporary poets were just trying to hone in on those moments.
a daniel line i like: "Haunting untrodden paths to wail apart")
also, i want sting's lute album. like now.
