Herrick, "Delight in Disorder"
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoestring, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,
Do more bewitch me, then when Art
Is too precise in every part.
I love the opening couplet. The observation feels very true to me, but it's incredibly hard to paraphrase, because the words resonate with each other and shade each other's meanings. There both is and is not a woman in these lines--someone's clothes seem both sweet and disordered to the poet, but the observation is posited as a general statement.
That "wantonness," likewise, is "kindled in clothes" has three meanings:
(a) literally, of course, their disarray causes the clothes to be wanton,
(b) but "wantonness" could also be an attribute of the woman, deduced through her clothes,
(c) or, "wantonness" could be the state induced in the poet by the sight of these clothes.
In fact, of course, it is all three. I've had the feeling of being attracted to someone because of an imperfection or assymetry about her clothing, and Herrick has captured exactly how a feeling that arises in the viewer seems to be caused by an object and rest in the viewee.
The remainder of the poem feels incredibly rooted in Herrick's experience of a particular woman, or several women, but he keeps a general tone. I can't tell if he's really writing a poem about the way lust fixates on details, or if his generalism really is an attempt for him at objectivity. That is, is it important for the poem to be general in order to nail down a particular feeling (which he does well), or is he simply so caught up in looking at women that he gets fascinated by the details and misses the woman herself?
The end of the poem I find really problematic, because just as he introduces himself into the poem--first as viewer and then as the object of these items actions upon him--he moves into total abstraction. If he's still talking about women, his musing about "Art" is just a veiled way of accusing women of attempting to manipulate (poor) him through their presentation. If "Art" really refers to art, he's reducing the powerful specificity of an (imaginary) encounter into a silly metaphor for poetic creation.
In the fourth grade, I rewrote the ending to "Casabianca", because I didn't like the ending. Elizabeth Bishop did, too. Sutton had that version up on her wall.
I can only find one stanza of the version below, but it's already my favorite:
"The boy stood on the burning deck
A-melting with the heat.
His big blue eyes were full of tears;
His shoes were full of feet."
