66 DIALOGUE

The most famous example is the “Qas. īdat al- J. N. Wall, Transformations of the Word: Spenser,
Burdah” ( The Mantle) of the Egyptian Sufi poet Herbert, Vaughan (); M. Schoenfeldt, Prayer
al-Būs. īrī (ca. –), itself modeled on the and Power (); R. Rambuss, Closet Devotions
th-c. poem of the same name said to have been (); R. Targoff, Common Prayer: The Lan-
presented to Muhammad by Ka b ibn Zuhayr. guage of Public Devotion in Early Modern En-
Devotional poetry has traditionally been gland (); F. B. Brown et al., “Poetry,” The
one of the literary forms most available to Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. L. Jones, d ed.
women, and female poets have made impor- (); J. S. Hawley, Three Bhakti Voices ().
tant contributions to most of its trads. Rābi ah K.J.E. GRAHAM
al- Adawīyah (d. ) profoundly influenced
the devel. of Sufi devotional poetry by intro- DIALOGUE. Denotes an exchange of words
ducing its emphasis on love and mystic union. between or among dramatized speakers in lit.,
Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār (th c.), a devotee of Śiva, whether or not their speeches are written with a
was an early Tamil Bhakti poet-saint. Mīrābāī view to theatrical representation. Dialogue has
(th c.) remains one of the most beloved poet- characterized writing for the stage at least since
saints of the later Bhakti trad.; her emphasis the first actor stepped out from a chorus, al-
on Krishna’s physical beauty and her desire to though there are also important uses of *mono-
share her bridal bed with him raise questions logue in the drama. In poetic as in theatrical
about the gender of devotion. The Christian dialogue, a responsive conversation expresses
devotional revival of the th and th cs. drew diverse viewpoints, which are thereby opened
notable contributions from St. Teresa of Ávila to possible change. The device allows a wider
in Spain; Gabrielle de Coignard and Anne de range of ideas, emotions, and perspectives than
Marquets in France; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is readily available to a single voice and reli-
in Mexico; and Aemilia Lanyer, An Collins, ably generates dramatic conflict of a kind that
and Hester Pulter in England. Christina Ros- a collection of discrepant monologues, such as
setti is second in reputation only to Hopkins Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology or
among practitioners of the Victorian devotional even Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book,
lyric. Emily Dickinson treats many devotional does not. Monologues tacitly interrupted and
themes while tending more toward uncertainty poems in which one framing voice introduces
than to the comforts of faith. another main voice are not legitimate examples
Dickinson anticipates an important trend of dialogue, which demands interactive re-
in th-c. devotional poetry. Some poets have sponse. Dialogue impels all forms in which it
reacted to the modernist themes of the crisis appears toward dramatic confrontation, even as
of civilization and the death of God by am- it tends to favor the rhythms and nuances of
plifying the elements of complaint and doubt speech.
already present in many devotional trads. Wal- The best known cl. examples are the Socratic
lace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning,” T. S. Eliot’s dialogues of Plato, written in prose but ap-
Four Quartets, Anthony Hecht’s “Rites and parently based on th-c. BCE dramatic mimes
Ceremonies,” and Louise Glück’s The Wild Iris by Sophron and Epicharmus. Cl. authors in-
ask more questions than they answer, showing cluded verse dialogue in satiric, *pastoral, and
that devotional poetry can be written in the in- philosophical poems. Lucian modeled his prose
terrogative mood. Dialogues of the Dead on Plato but used the
! H. Brémond, Prière et Poésie (); L. Martz, form primarily for satiric and comic purposes.
The Poetry of Meditation (); W. T. Noon, Po- Numerous satires of Horace became models of
etry and Prayer (); R. Woolf, The English Re- vivid colloquial exchange between poetic speak-
ligious Lyric in the Middle Ages (); T. Cave, ers. Virgil’s *eclogues presented short pastoral
Devotional Poetry in France, c. – (); dialogues in verse. Dialogue in poetry often re-
B. K. Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seven- mained purely literary, although it also encour-
teenth-Century Religious Lyric (); G. B. Ten- aged recitation, as in formal philosophical dis-
nyson, Victorian Devotional Poetry (); putation and such musical developments as the
A. Schimmel, Mystical Poetry in Islam (); love duet, liturgical antiphony, and oratorio.
R. Strier, Love Known (); R. Alter, The Art of Verse dialogue flourished in the Middle Ages
Biblical Poetry (); P. S. Diehl, The Medieval in debates and flyting. The dualistic philosophi-
European Religious Lyric: An Ars Poetica (); cal temper of the age fostered dialogue, as in
N. Cutler, The Poetics of Tamil Devotion (); The Owl and the Nightingale. A typical subject
 DIALOGUE 67

was the debate between the soul and the body. Hardy all used dialogue in poems as well as
Med. romances and allegories used dialogue verse dramas. Revived interest in prose dialogue
in ways that raise a doubt as to whether they appears in Oscar Wilde and later, in France, in
were solely for reading or were also meant to be the dialogue experiments of Paul Valéry.
staged. Many Asian poems fit this description Twentieth-c. poetry exhibits further blurring
as well. The th-c. Roman de la Rose employed of generic distinctions pertinent to this topic.
multiple speakers for satiric and dramatic pur- “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” is only the clear-
poses, while the Fr. débat and parlement were est example of W. B. Yeats’s frequent reliance
forms of poetic contest that influenced the on traditional verse dialogue. Writings by Sam-
med. devel. of the drama, François Villon’s uel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Frost
dialogue between heart and body being a no- suggest the role of poetic dialogue in a wider
table example. Popular ballads often included variety of dramatic and nondramatic forms.
more than one speaker to heighten dramatic Polyphonic, juxtapositive, and commentatorial
tension or suspense, as in “Lord Randall” and modes in T. S. Eliot and esp. Ezra Pound often
“Edward.” read like dialogue by other means. Call-and-
The Ren. revived specifically philosophical response conventions have revitalized dialogue
dialogue in verse, related to the devel. of prose in poetry from the Af. diaspora. Implied dia-
dialogues by Thomas Elyot, Thomas More, and logue in lyrics by Geoffrey Hill and Ted Hughes
Roger Ascham. Torquato Tasso called the dia- objectifies the subject and produces heightened
logue imitazione di ragionamento (imitation of dramatic tension. In all these ways, as in the
reasoning), claiming that it reconciled drama Victorian dramatization of the monologue, dia-
and (its cognate and companion since Plato) logue poems deemphasize the autonomy of the
dialectic. In the th and th cs., John Hey- poetic word, stressing instead the conditional
wood’s “Dialogue of Proverbs” and Margaret aspects of utterance. Dialogue thus retains an
Cavendish’s dialogue poems were effective ex- important place, even as traditional distinctions
amples of the form. Songs in question-and-an- between verse and poetry, lit. and performance,
swer format by Shakespeare and Philip Sidney are questioned and explored.
emphasized the link between dialogue and the The historically recurrent overlap among
interrogative mode. Multiple voices in Edmund dialogue, dialectics, and dialect finds its major
Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender recalled the dia- mod. theorist in the Rus. critic Mikhail Bakhtin.
logue trad. of Virgil’s Eclogues. Notable Ren. Although Bakhtin’s writings emphasize the
examples of dialogue poems include Samuel novel, his analysis of the role of the “dialogic”
Daniel’s “Ulysses and the Siren” and Andrew has implications for understanding all literary
Marvell’s “Dialogue between the Soul and the meaning. On Bakhtin’s showing, even osten-
Body.” Courtly masques (Ben Jonson, John sible monologues always harbor a conditioning
Milton) prominently combined dialogue with dialogic element. This view implicitly decenters
music and lyrics, a combination that was also the authority often claimed for first-person lyric
adapted for interludes within stage comedy and or poetic narrative. For Bakhtin, the unsaid, the
romance. Allegorical poems like John Dryden’s partially said, and the equivocally said are as
The Hind and the Panther provided an occasion potentially meaningful as the clearly said; and
for dialogue, as did th-c. direct-speech poems these moreover, like all lang. uses, result from
like Alexander Pope’s “Epilogue to the Satires.” social forces, whose contending interplay it re-
The adoption of multiple speakers in the Scots mains the privilege, and accordingly the ethical
ballads of Robert Burns and the Dorset ec- duty, of dialogue to play out.
logues of William Barnes suggests some affinity ! E. Merrill, The Dialogue in English Literature
between dialogue and dialect. (); E. R. Purpus, “The Dialogue in Eng-
The romantic predilection for lyrical solo lish Literature, –,” ELH  ();
did not prevent the deployment of dialogue in W. J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Di-
poetic experiments by Lord Byron, John Keats, alogue (); F. M. Keener, English Dialogues
and esp. P. B. Shelley. Ger. and Scandinavian of the Dead (); J. Mukarovskij, The Word
writers of songs and ballads made widespread and Verbal Art, trans. and ed. J. Burbank and
use of the device. Victorian efforts to contextu- T. Steiner (), ch. ; M. E. Brown, Double
alize the romantic lyric chiefly took form in the Lyric (); D. Marsh, The Quattrocento Dia-
dramatic monologue, but Alfred, Lord Tenny- logue (); M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imag-
son; Browning; Matthew Arnold; and Thomas ination, ed. M. Holquist, trans. C. Emerson and
68 DICTION

M. Holquist (); A. K. Kennedy, Dramatic Di- signification, which builds on other dictionar-
alogue (); T. Todorov and M. M. Bakhtin, The ies and on quotations; and () illustrative quo-
Dialogical Principle, trans. W. Godzich (); tations, which show forms and uses, particular
Bakhtin, ed. G. S. Morson (); J. R. Sny- senses, earliest use (or, for obsolete words, lat-
der, Writing the Scene of Speaking (); The est use), and connotations. Studies of diction
Interpretation of Dialogue, ed. T. Maranhão might test these categories for any given poem.
(); G. S. Morson and C. Emerson, Mikhail In common usage, meaning refers to definition
Bakhtin (); D. H. Bialostosky, Words- under category (), but meaning as defined by
worth, Dialogics, and the Practice of Criticism the OED incl. all four categories. And meaning
(); M. S. Macovski, Dialogue and Literature in poetry, fully defined, includes all functions
(); M. Eskin, Ethics and Dialogue (); of a word.
K. Njogu, Reading Poetry as Dialogue (). Diction includes all parts of speech, not sim-
B. A. NICHOLS; H. F. TUCKER ply nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Emphasis on
what is striking tends to isolate main parts of
DICTION. Diction signifies the words or speech and imposes a dubious standard of viv-
phrases chosen for a piece of writing. It is the idness. Even articles matter (cf. Walt Whitman
Latinate equivalent of Gr. lexis, which was ac- and E. M. Forster on passages to India). Verb
cepted as Eng. usage by the OED in the second forms matter (see Merrill, , on first-person
ed. (first citations in  [citing MP]; Frye present active indicative). Prepositions can
[]). Lexis is a more useful term than diction have metaphorical force or double possibilities
because more neutral, but it is still chiefly used (e.g., “of,” a favorite device of Wallace Stevens;
in ling. (OED, sense .), not in poetics. It is see Hollander ). The grammatical struc-
important to distinguish “the diction of poetry” tures of different langs. offer other possibilities
from “poetic diction” (esp. in the th-c. sense). for plurisignation and ambiguity (see SYNTAX,
“Poetic diction” or even just “diction” may elicit POETIC).
only the question of unusual lang. rather than Discussions of diction often pull more to-
questions concerning all the lang. of poetry. ward polemics than poetics. It may be impos-
The primary rule for thinking about dic- sible to separate the two, but the effort is essen-
tion is that words in a poem always exist in tial (Nowottny is exemplary). S. T. Coleridge’s
relation, never in isolation: “there are no bad dictum should be remembered: every great and
words or good words; there are only words in original author “has had the task of creating
bad or good places” (Nowottny). Otherwise, the taste by which he is to be enjoyed” (cited
classifying diction can be a barren exercise, just by Wordsworth ), a task that perforce in-
as concentrating on isolated words can be bar- cludes polemics. Thus, T. S. Eliot’s attacks on
ren for a beginning poet. Consistency within the Keats–Tennyson line of diction, esp. as
the chosen area of diction is necessary for a developed by A. C. Swinburne, are better read
well-made poem, and consistency is not always generically in terms of charm and *riddle, as
easy to achieve. Listening for a poem’s range of Frye does (). Similarly, it is important not
diction enables the reader to hear moves out- to read mod. assumptions about diction back
side that range. Great skill in diction implies into older poetry. (See Strang, on reading Ed-
that a poet knows words as he or she knows mund Spenser’s work in Spenser’s lang., not “as
people (Hollander ), knows how “words if he were writing mod. Eng. with intermittent
have a stubborn life of their own” (Elton), and lapses into strange expressions.”) Critics need
knows that words need to be “at home” (Eliot, to pay attention to historical scholarship on the
Little Gidding, the best mod. poetic description contemporaneity or archaism of words—often
of diction “that is right”). difficult to assess.
Some useful categories for studying diction There are only a few general questions con-
may be drawn from the OED’s introductory cerning diction, and they have remained for
matter (now also online), where vocabulary centuries. The most fruitful may be the more
may be examined as follows: () identification, particular ones. One long-standing general
incl. usual spelling, pronunciation, grammati- issue is whether a special diction for poetry ex-
cal part of speech, whether specialized, and ists or should exist. This, in turn, depends on
status (e.g., rare, obsolete, archaic, colloquial, how poetry is defined or what type of poetry
dialectal); () etymology , incl. subsequent word is in question. Of discussions in antiquity,
formation and cognates in other langs.; () those by Aristotle, Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
 DICTION 69

Horace, and Longinus are the most important. Wordsworth actually means “ordinary” lang.,
Aristotle’s few remarks remain pertinent: po- the lingua communis (cf. OED, Pref., d ed.),
etic diction should be both clear and striking: and even this needs cultivation to become
“ordinary words” give clarity; “strange words, truly communis (Coleridge cites Dante). Word-
metaphors” should be judiciously used to give sworth’s real object, Coleridge saw, was to at-
surprising effects, to make diction shine and to tack assumptions about a supposedly necessary
avoid diction that is inappropriately “mean.” In poetic diction. The debate is of great impor-
the Middle Ages and early Ren., the issue of dic- tance for diction. It marks the shift from what
tion became important as med. Lat. gave way Frye calls a high mimetic mode to a low mi-
to the vernaculars. Dante’s De vulgari eloquen- metic one, a shift still governing the diction of
tia (On Vernacular Eloquence, ca. ) is the poetry today. (In Fr. poetry, the shift comes a
central text in the questione della lingua. Dante little later and is associated with Victor Hugo
classifies diction according to various contexts. [Preface to Cromwell, ].)
E.g., in DVE ., he gives detailed criteria for Coleridge disagreed with Wordsworth’s con-
words suitable for “the highest style.” Some are tention that “there neither is, nor can be any
as specific as in Paul Valéry’s well-known search essential difference between the lang. of prose
for “a word that is feminine, disyllabic, includes and metrical composition.” Though there is a
P or F, ends in a mute syllable, and is a synonym “neutral style” common to prose and poetry,
for break or disintegration, and not learned, not Coleridge finds it notable that such a theory
rare. Six conditions—at least!” (Nowottny). “should have proceeded from a poet, whose dic-
Dante sees that the main question, as so often, tion, next to that of Shakespeare and Milton, ap-
is appropriateness or *decorum. He also stresses pears to me of all others the most individualized
appropriateness for the person using a given and characteristic.” Some words in a poem may
lexis (e.g., sufficient natural talent, art, and well be in everyday use; but “are those words
learning), a criterion largely unfamiliar today. in those places commonly employed in real life
The term poetic diction is strongly associated to express the same thought or outward thing?
with th-c. poetry, largely because of William . . . No! nor are the modes of connections; and
Wordsworth’s attacks on it in the Preface to Lyr- still less the breaks and transitions” (ch. ). In
ical Ballads. Wordsworth notes that Lyrical Bal- Coleridge’s modification of Wordsworth’s well-
lads includes “little of what is usually called po- intentioned arguments, readers may still find
etic diction,” by which he means the *epithets, essential principles applicable to questions of
*periphrases, *personifications, archaisms, and poetic diction.
other conventionalized phrases too often used The th c., in one sense, took up Word-
unthinkingly in Augustan poetry. As against sworth’s argument, steadily removing virtually
Thomas Gray, e.g., who wrote that “the lan- every restriction on diction. The st c. now
guage of the age is never the language of poetry” generally bars no word whatever from the dic-
(letter to R. West, April ), Wordsworth ad- tion of poetry, at least in the Germanic and Ro-
vocated using the “real language of men,” esp. mance langs. Struggles over appropriate diction
those in humble circumstances and rustic life. in the th c. included attacks on the romantics,
But Wordsworth laid down many conditions Robert Browning, and Whitman. Attempts
governing such “real language” in poetry (e.g., by Robert Bridges and others to domesticate
men “in a state of vivid sensation,” the lang. G. M. Hopkins’s extraordinary diction are well
adapted and purified, a selection only). known. In the early th c., Edwardian critics
Coleridge (), with his superior criti- with genteel notions of poetry objected to Ru-
cal mind, saw that “the language of real life” pert Brooke’s writing about seasickness and to
was an “equivocal expression” applying only Wilfred Owen’s disgust at the horrors of World
to some poetry, and there in ways never de- War I (Stead). Wordsworth’s “real language of
nied (chs. –). He rejected the argument men” was twisted by some into attacks on any
of rusticity, asserting that the lang. of Words- unusual diction whatsoever—difficult, local,
worth’s rustics derives from a strong grounding learned—a problem to this day, though now
in the lang. of the Eng. Bible (authorized ver- less from genteel notions than egalitarian ones
sion, ) and the liturgy or hymn-book. In inappropriately extended to the diction of all
any case, the best part of lang., says Coleridge, poetry. Yet the diction of poetry may still be
is derived not from objects but from “reflec- associated with the lang. of a certain class—see
tion on the acts of the mind itself.” By “real,” Tony Harrison’s poems playing standard Eng.
70 DICTION

against working-class Eng. But if poetry now the etymological appropriateness of sherbet in
generally admits all types of diction, it remains Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”).
true that the diction of poetry—of the Bible, Diction may be considered along an axis of
Shakespeare, and the ballads, e.g.—needs to be old to new, with archaism at one end and inno-
learned. Otherwise, most older poetry, as well vation (incl. neologism) at the other. Archaism
as much contemp., cannot be well read at all may be introduced to enlarge the diction of po-
(Vendler). The diction of the authorized ver- etry, sometimes through native terms (Spenser,
sion of the Bible and of the Gr. and Lat. classics Hopkins). Or it may be used for certain genres
has influenced Eng. poetry for centuries. Vir- (e.g., literary imitations of oral ballads) or for
gil’s diction in *eclogue, *georgic, and *epic was specific effects, ironic, allusive, or other. Inno-
admired and imitated well past the Ren. The vation may remain peculiar to one poet or may
strategies and effects of allusion should not be enlarge the poetic lexicon. Neologisms (new-
overlooked. coined words) tend now to be associated with
Historical changes in the lang. make the novelty more than freshness and sometimes
use of good dictionaries mandatory. In Eng., with strained effects. The very word indicates
the OED is the most generous and its quota- they are not common currency. Some periods
tions invaluable, but other dictionaries are also are conducive to expanding diction in general
needed (e.g., of U.S. Eng., for etymology). (the mid-th c., the late th c.) or to expand-
The elementary philological categories of wid- ing diction in some areas (the lang. of digital
ening and narrowing and raising and lower- technology, nowadays, though not yet in gen-
ing in meaning are useful. (Cf. wanton, where eral poetic diction). Where poets do not invent
solely mod. senses must not be applied to John or resuscitate terms, they draw on vocabulary
Milton’s use, or even as late as Bridges’s “Wan- from different contemporaneous sources (see
ton with long delay the gay spring leaping the OED categories). Foreign, local, and dia-
cometh” [“April, ”]; gay is well known.) lectal words, as well as slang, are noted below.
Hidden semantic and connotative changes The precision of terms drawn from such areas
must be esp. watched, along with favorite as theology, philosophy, or the Bible must not
words in a given time (Miles). The diction of be underestimated, for controversy can center
some mod. poets pays attention to historical on one word. Studies working outward from
ling., while that of others is largely synchronic; single words (e.g. Empson; Lewis; Barfield on
readers should test. ruin) are valuable reminders of historical and
Etymologies are stories of origins. The ety- conceptual significance in diction.
mologist cares whether they are true or false, Shakespeare has contributed most to the
but a poet need not (Ruthven); mythologies enlargement of our stock of words; critics
are for the poet as useful as hists. Philology regularly note how often he provides the first
may include certain assumptions about po- example of a given word in the OED. He
etic diction (see Barfield against Max Müller). adapts words from the stock of both Eng. (e.g.,
Etymologies may include hists. of war and lonely , presumably from Sidney’s loneliness) and
struggle (for nationalism involves lang. just other langs. (monumental, from Lat.); he ap-
as class does). Poets may exploit the riches of parently invents words (bump); he shifts their
etymology (see Geoffrey Hill’s Mystery of the grammatical function (control as a verb rather
Charity of Charles Péguy on Eng. and Fr. dic- than a noun), and more. He possesses the larg-
tion). Etymology may function as a “mode of est known vocabulary of any poet, but it is
thought” (Curtius) or as a specific “frame for his extraordinary use of so large a word hoard
trope” (see Hollander , on Hopkins) or (as against ordinary recognition) that is so
both. Invented or implied etymologies can remarkable.
also be useful (silva through Dante’s well- Most new words are now generally drawn
known selva links by sound and sense with from scientific or technical sources, though
salveo, salvatio, etc.). Milton plays earlier poetry makes comparatively little use of them.
etymological meaning against later mean- In the th c., poets could say that “Newton
ing, such play functioning as a trope for the demands the Muse” (see M. H. Nicholson’s
fallen state of lang. (Cook). Eng. is unusually title), but poets today do not generally say that
accommodating, combining as it does both “Einstein demands the Muse.” A. R. Ammons
Latinate and Germanic words. Other im- is one of the few mod. poets exploiting the pos-
portant word roots should also be noted (cf. sibilities of new scientific diction: e.g., zygote
 DICTION 71

(, OED) rhymed with goat; white dwarf (cf. Coleridge, Letters,  Oct. : “The word
(, OED d ed.); and black hole (). Of ‘swain’ . . . conveys too much of the Cant of
the large stock of colloquial and slang expres- Pastoral”). Connotation or association is gov-
sions, many are evanescent or inert, though erned partly by genre and is all-important for
special uses may be effective. Shakespeare’s gift diction.
for introducing colloquial diction is a salutary Diction also depends partly on place. The
reminder not to reject colloquialisms per se. Or largest division in Eng. is between Great Britain
see Stevens (Shucks, Pfft in “Add This to Rheto- and the U.S., but poetry from elsewhere (Af-
ric”) or Merrill (slush [funds] in “Snow Jobs”). rica, Asia, Australasia, Canada, the Caribbean,
The same may be said of slang, a vernacular Ireland) also shows important differences. Es-
speech below colloquial on a three-part scale of tablishing a distinctive poetic style in a new
() standard or formal Eng., () colloquial Eng., country with an old lang. presents peculiar
and () slang. (See The New Partridge Diction- problems that novelty in itself will not solve.
ary of Slang and Unconventional English, th ed. Within a country, diction will vary locally, and
rev. [].) Slang may come from the lingo poets can make memorable uses of local terms
of specialized trades or professions, schools, (Yeats of perne in “Sailing to Byzantium,” Eliot
sports, etc., and may move up through collo- of rote in The Dry Salvages; Whitman uses na-
quial to standard Eng. It appears more often tive Amerindian terms). The question of dialect
in prose than in poetry. But poetry can make shades into this. Robert Burns and Thomas
effective use of it from François Villon’s under- Hardy draw on local and dialectal words. Hop-
world slang of the th c. to T. S. Eliot’s de- kins’s remarkable diction derives from current
mobbed in The Waste Land. For a brief telling lang., dialectal and other, as well as older words;
discussion of the question, see George Eliot, some (e.g., pitch) have specific usage for Hop-
Middlemarch, ch. . kins (see Milroy). The use of Af. Am. vernacular
Along the axis of old to new, the most inter- Eng. is familiar (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langs-
esting question is why and how some diction ton Hughes, James Weldon Johnson); Derek
begins to sound dated. Archaisms and innova- Walcott includes the Creole of St. Lucia. For-
tions alike are easy to hear. So also is the diction eign diction or xenoglossia, a special case, works
we designate as, say, th-c. or Tennysonian or along a scale of assimilation, for standard dic-
Whitmanian. But what is it that distinguishes tion includes many words originally considered
the poetic diction of a generation ago, and why foreign. Considerable use of foreign diction
do amateur poets tend to use the diction of (apart from novelties like macaronic verse) im-
their poetic grandparents? The aging of words plies a special contract with the reader, at least
or the passing of their claim on our allegiance in societies unaccustomed to hearing more than
is of continuing interest to poets as part of the one lang. Diction may also vary according to
diachronic aspect of their art. class (see above). It is doubtful if it varies in a
Different types of poetry require different general way according to gender.
lexical practice, though such requirements Interpretive categories are numerous, and
vary according to time and place. Oral poetry readers should be aware of them as such; even
makes use of stock phrases or epithets cast into taxonomies are interpretive. Beyond the catego-
formulas. Some of Homer’s epithets became ries already mentioned, diction may be judged
renowned, e.g., poluphloisbos (loud-roaring) according to the degree of “smoothness” (Ten-
for the sea (see Amy Clampitt’s echo of this). nyson as against Browning is a standard exam-
Compound epithets in OE poetry are known ple; see Frye ), centering on the large and
by the ON term *kenning and sometimes take important question of sound in lexis (cf. Seamus
the form of a riddle. Different genres also re- Heaney on W. H. Auden: “the gnomic clunk of
quire different practice (Fowler), a requirement Anglo-Saxon phrasing . . .” [The Government
much relaxed today. Epic required a high- of the Tongue (), ]). Or diction may be
style diction, as did the *sublime (see Monk). judged by the degree of difficulty (Browning,
Genres of the middle and low style drew from Hopkins, Eliot, Stevens), though once-difficult
a different register. *Satire usually works in the diction can become familiar. Strangeness in
middle style but allows much leeway, esp. in diction can contribute to the strangeness some-
Juvenalian as against Horatian satire. Any dic- times thought necessary for aesthetic effect
tion may become banal—e.g., that of the th- (Barfield) or for poetry itself (Genette, arguing
c. sonnetteers or that of some *pastoral writers with Jean Cohen, also compares the ostranenie
72 DIMETER

[defamiliarization] of the Rus. formalists and D. Alighieri, Literary Criticism of Dante Aligh-
the lang. of a state of dreaming). Some poets ieri, ed. and trans. R. S. Haller (); J. Milroy,
are known for difficult or strange diction (e.g., The Language of G. M. Hopkins (); N. Hil-
Spenser, the metaphysical poets, Whitman, ton, Literal Imagination: Blake’s Vision of Words
Browning), but readers should also note con- (); M. H. Abrams, “Wordsworth and
summate skill in quieter effects of diction (e.g., Coleridge on Diction and Figures,” The Corre-
Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop). spondent Breeze (); R.W.V. Elliott, Thomas
Distinctive diction is part of what makes Hardy’s English (); C. Ricks, T. S. Eliot and
a poet familiar, and the diction of a poet may Prejudice (); R.O.A.M. Lyne, Words and
be studied in itself (see Fowler). The discipline the Poet ()—Virgil; B.M.H. Strang, “Lan-
of the art of diction is still best understood by guage,” Spenser Encycyclopedia, ed. A. C. Ham-
studying the comments and revisions of good ilton et al. (); E. Cook, Against Coercion:
poets. Games Poets Play (); C. Miller, The Inven-
! General Studies: W. Wordsworth, “Pref- tion of Evening ().
ace, Lyrical Ballads, d ed. (), incl. “Ap- E. COOK
pendix on . . . Poetic Diction”; and Word-
sworth, “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface” DIMETER (Gr., “of two measures”). A line
(); S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria consisting of two measures. In classical prosody,
(); Aristotle, Poetics, trans. I. Bywater the metron in *iambic, *trochaic, and *anapes-
(); O. Elton, “The Poet’s Dictionary,” tic verse is a dipody (pair of feet); hence, the cl.
E&S  (); W. Empson, The Structure of iambic dimeter contains two metra or four feet.
Complex Words (); D. Davie, Purity of Dic- But in mod. prosodies, the concept of the me-
tion in English Verse (); Curtius; Frye; C. S. tron was never established: here -meter is syn-
Lewis, Studies in Words (); W. Nowottny, onymous with foot. The Eng. iambic dimeter,
The Language Poets Use ()—essential read- therefore, consists of two feet, the trimeter of
ing; J. Miles, Eras and Modes in English Poetry , three feet, etc. This terminology applies only to
d ed. (); K. K. Ruthven, “The Poet as *accentual-syllabic verse, which is regular: *ac-
Etymologist,” CQ  (); O. Barfield, Po- centual verse—e.g., a line of two stresses but a
etic Diction, d ed. ()—important read- variable number of syllables—is not, properly
ing; F. W. Bateson, English Poetry and the speaking, a dimeter. Short-lined verse in Eng.,
English Language, d ed. (); A. Sherbo, such as the *Skeltonic, is rarely regular enough
English Poetic Diction from Chaucer to Word- to be called dimeter, though dimeter lines fea-
sworth (); N. Frye, “Charms and Riddles,” ture in the Burns stanza and the *limerick. More
Spiritus Mundi (); Fowler—excellent regular examples do occur, particularly in the
on diction and genre; G. Genette, Figures of th- and th-c. lyric, e.g., Michael Drayton’s
Literary Discourse (trans. ), esp. –; “An Amouret Anacreontic” and Robert Her-
J. Merrill, Recitative: Prose (); J. Boase- rick’s “To a Lark.” More recent approximations
Beier, Poetic Compounds (); C. Ricks, include W. H. Auden’s “This Lunar Beauty” and
The Force of Poetry (); A. Ferry, The Art of Donald Justice’s “Dreams of Water.”
Naming (); J. Hollander, Melodious Guile T.V.F. BROGAN; J. M. COCOLA
(); H. Vendler, The Music of What Hap-
pens (); S. Adamson, “Literary Language,” DOZENS. A game of exchanging, in contest
CHEL (), v. , –; v. , –; form, ritualized verbal insults, which are usu-
J. Hollander, The Work of Poetry (). ally in rhymed *couplets and often profane. The
! Specialized Studies: S. H. Monk, The Sub- term is probably a literate corruption of the ver-
lime (); V. L. Rubel, Poetic Diction in the nacular doesn’ts, relating to forbidden lang. ac-
English Renaissance (); J. Arthos, The Lan- tivity. The game is practiced now mostly among
guage of Natural Description in th-Century adolescent Af. Am. males, though its origin is
Poetry (); M. M. Mahood, Shakespeare’s thought to lie in the verbal insult contests of
Wordplay (); Wimsatt and Brooks, ch. ; West Africa. The dozens is a subcategory of
A. Ewert, “Dante’s Theory of Diction,” MHRA *signifying. Sometimes referred to as woofing,
 (); C. K. Stead, The New Poetic (); sounding, cutting, capping, or chopping, the rit-
G. Tillotson, Augustan Poetic Diction (); ual is most often called playing the dozens. The
W.J.B. Owen, Wordsworth as Critic (); subjects of the insults are frequently the rela-
H. Kenner, The Pound Era (), esp. –; tives of the verbal opponent, esp. his mother,
 DRAMATIC POETRY 73

and the insults are frequently sexual. A mildly not of words but of deeds (the “imitation of ac-
phrased example of the dozens technique and tion”). Dramatic poetry implies that words are
style would be “I don’t play the dozens, the doz- defined in relation to the work of the theater’s
ens ain’t my game, / But the way I loved your other instruments of mimesis—the temporal
mama is a crying shame.” structure of the event, its plot; the practices of
The players of the dozens must display great acting and the projection of character, or ethos;
skill with *rhyme, wit, and *rhythm to win the the design of music and spectacle—principally
approval of their audience. The dozens is partly conveyed not by lang. but by actors, “with
an initiation ritual that teaches a player how to all the people engaged in the mimesis actually
hold his equilibrium by learning to master the doing things” (Poetics a). Nonetheless,
power of words and humor. The exchange takes drama has a persistent association with for-
place as a verbal duel in which words and humor mally inventive lang., from the range of verse
are chosen to sting, so that the opponent will be forms encompassed by tragedy and comedy in
goaded to either greater lexical creativity or de- Aristotle’s era to the verbal richness of much
feat. Langston Hughes draws on the trad. of the contemp. drama, even when that drama is writ-
dozens, particularly in his long poetic work Ask ten in prose. Cohn pointed out in the previ-
Your Mama (), as do Richard Wright and ous ed., “Western critics have interpreted the
Ralph Ellison. Several genres of popular music, phrase dramatic poetry in three main ways: ()
most recently hip-hop, have maintained the vis- lyrics or short poems that imply a scene; ()
ibility of the dozens in mass culture. plays that are valorized with the adjective ‘po-
See INVECTIVE. etic’; and () dramas whose dialogue is calcu-
! R. D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle latingly rhythmed—in rhythms that are often
(); Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out, ed. T. Koch- regularized into meters and that are usually
man (); W. Labov, Language in the Inner presented as discrete lines on the page.” As
City (); L. W. Levine, Black Culture and Cohn recognized, resigned to treat dramatic
Black Consciousness (); G. Smitherman, poetry as synonymous with “verse drama,”
Talkin and Testifyin (); H. L. Gates Jr., these definitions are inadequate. The first em-
The Signifying Monkey (); M. Morgan, braces lyric poems written from the perspec-
“The Africanness of Counterlanguage among tive of individual characters and so understands
Afro-Americans,” Africanisms in Afro-American drama—as a mode of cultural production in-
Language Varieties, ed. S. Mufwene (); volving *performance as well as scripted lang.—
J. R. Rickford and R. J. Rickford, Spoken Soul in metaphorical terms: for all their “drama,”
(); E. Wald, The Dozens (). Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” or T. S.
E. A. PETERS Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
are not conceived for embodied mimesis. The
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE. See MONOLOGUE. second turns the word poetic into a term of
approbation, without critical purchase on the
DRAMATIC POETRY function or purpose of lang. in performance.
The third—verse drama—segregates a class of
I. Definition drama according to the accidents of culture and
II. Dramatic Poetry and Drama in Verse hist.: emphasizing the use of verse rather than
III. Dramatic Poetry and Performance Theory the distinctive contribution that verbal design
IV. Dramatic Poetry in the Theater makes to the conception of dramatic action.
Although verse has had a complex impact on
I. Definition. Dramatic poetry is at best an in- drama and its performance, “dramatic poetry”
trinsically contestable critical category and at points toward a more searching problem, hav-
worst a violent oxymoron, sparking the theo- ing to do with the functioning of writing in the
retical and historical friction between perfor- making of drama, a form of *poiēsis extending
mance and poetry, theater and writing, action beyond words, in which—to recall Austin’s dis-
and lang. For Aristotle, drama is one kind of cussion of performative speech—scripted words
poesis, but within his analysis of drama, lang.— are expected to do things well beyond what the
the verbal, poetic dimension of plays—is sub- words themselves say. More than verse drama,
ordinate to plot, character, and thought. In dramatic poetry is a term of theoretical inquiry,
the context of the Poetics, this hierarchy makes pointing to the troubled interface where writing
sense because dramatic *mimesis is composed meets performance in the definition of drama.
74 DRAMATIC POETRY

II. Dramatic Poetry and Drama in Verse. Dra- of th- and th-c. Europe was also typically
matic writing has a longstanding historical con- based on religious themes, either in the scrip-
nection with verse. The reciprocity between tural narratives of the great Corpus Christi
drama and ritual is often marked in the ceremo- cycles or the theological debate of the moral-
nial character of dramatic performances staged ity plays, and developed indigenous verse forms
in connection with religious or civic events or as well. Though the verse of the anonymous
with the formalities of an aristocratic court re- Wakefield Master, involving the deft balance
flected by patterned and often elevated lang. of assonance and rhyme in a complex nine-
In Eur. drama, the lineage of scripted dramatic line stanza form, is best known, the Eng. cycles
performance originates in the th- and th-c. (Wakefield, York, Chester, and N-Town) gen-
BCE Gr. civic festivals sponsoring competitions erally make fine use of the metrical trads. and
in the performance of dithyrambs (large cho- alliterative verse of the period, echoed in the
ruses of men or boys), tragedy (a trilogy of three surprisingly fluid use of a basic octosyllabic line
tragedies composed by a single playwright, fol- in the th-c. Fr. farce Master Pathelin.
lowed by a satyr play), and eventually comedy; In Europe, then, verse plays an important
the major festival, which sponsored the plays of role at the origin and devel. of dramatic writ-
the surviving dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, ing from Athenian tragedy through both the
Euripides, and Aristophanes, was the Athenian Lat. and vernacular forms of med. drama to the
City Dionysia, held annually in March–April. two principal venues of dramatic performance
Cl. Gr. tragedy used a variety of verse meters in the early mod. period: the commercial pub-
for the chorus, while individual roles (like the lic theater and the more stylized theater of the
chorus, all played by men) were assigned iam- aristocratic courts. Verse coordinates with el-
bic trimeter and developed a characteristic evated subject matter and the elite social world
structure: a prologue, in which a single charac- of a specific audience in other early dramatic
ter—the Watchman in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, trads., linking aesthetic to social functions in
Dionysus in Euripides’ Bacchae—opens the cl. Sanskrit drama and in the Nō theater of
play; the parodos, or singing/dancing entrance the med. Japanese court, much as in the Stuart
of the chorus; a series of episodes in *dialogue court masque and the neoclassical Fr. drama of
between individual characters, punctuated the th c. In some theatrical genres, however,
by choral odes, with their characteristic verbal the elaborate verbal script is held apart from the
(and, logically, physical) movements of *strophe, sphere of enactment. In the South Asian dance
*antistrophe, and*epode; and, after the stunning drama Kathakali, the performers are accompa-
catastrophe, the exodos of the chorus. In com- nied by song and narration, but they do not
edy, Aristophanes deployed a wider range of speak themselves; in the Ramlila—a ten-day
metrical forms both for choruses and for indi- enactment of Ram’s battle with Ravan in the
vidual speeches. Roman drama, initially based Rāmāyan.a—the actors improvise their perfor-
on Gr. models, was first performed in the d c. mance, coordinating it with the simultaneous
BCE and quickly developed its own formal and recitation of the Hindu epic.
thematic identity; the verse meter of Plautus’s The pervasive devel. of two institutions—
comedies was generally based on the trochaic print publishing and the secular commercial
septenarius, though with considerable latitude, theater—redefined the practices of dramatic
while Terence consistently favored the iambic writing and performance in th- and th-c.
senarius and Seneca scrupulously employed the Europe. Though most of the printed drama in
iambic trimeter. the period was propelled by the theater’s need
The decline of the Roman Empire brought for new material, a developing notion of “lit.”
the decline of its institutions, incl. theater; as a distinct, valuable genre of writing coordi-
while popular performance surely persisted, nated with the perception of dramatic poetry’s
formal, written drama emerges—uneasily—as signifying a special class of drama, in which an
an instrument of the Church, in the versified elaborate verbal structure has a value indepen-
*tropes that minimally illustrated and enacted dent from its utility in instigating or sustaining
portions of the Roman Catholic Mass, begin- stage performance. And yet, segregating the
ning in the th or th c. CE. The Lat. tropes complexities of dramatic composition in verse
were very occasionally adapted into vernacular from the intricacies of dramatic writing in prose
langs.—as in the th-c. Anglo-Norman Jeu miscasts the literary and theatrical hist. of West-
d’Adam—but the energetic vernacular drama ern drama. Many of the early mod. masters of
 DRAMATIC POETRY 75

dramatic verse—Shakespeare and Ben Jonson verbal composition, its poetry, is independent
among them—were masters of dramatic prose of its functioning in theatrical representation.
and masters of stagecraft as well, shaping verse The great Eur. poets of the romantic period
or prose and various dramatic genres to meet the succeeded in some measure in writing a the-
demand of specific theaters and their audiences. atrically ambitious verse drama, notably G. E.
A richly pointed prose sustains the hist. of comic Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (), Friedrich
drama, from Niccolò Machiavelli’s satiric Man- Schiller’s Maria Stuart (), Heinrich von
dragola () through Jonson’s Bartholomew Kleist’s durable comedy The Broken Jug ()
Fair () to the plays of William Wycherley, and his scarifying tragedy Penthesilea (),
George Etherege, William Congreve, George S. T. Coleridge’s Remorse (), Lord Byron’s
Farquhar, Oliver Goldsmith, and R. B. Sheridan Manfred (), P. B. Shelley’s The Cenci (,
in the th and th cs.; and to mods. like Oscar staged at the Thèâtre Alfred Jarry by Antonin
Wilde, G. B. Shaw, and Tom Stoppard, much as Artaud in ), Alexander Pushkin’s Boris
comedy from Shakespeare to Molière to Caryl Godunov (), Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzac-
Churchill has also been written in a fluent and cio (), Robert Browning’s A Blot in the
supple verse. ‘Scutcheon (), and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s
Verse is undeniably associated with social Becket ().
class in Eur. drama, the privileged mode of In , Émile Zola called for poets to recog-
courtly works like the masque and the plays nize “that poetry is everywhere, in everything”:
of Fr. neoclassicism; it is also associated with poetic lang. appeared, by the late th c., in-
aristocratic characters in the plays of the early capable of addressing the dramatic situations
mod. Eng. commercial theater and sustains re- of mod. life. After a brilliant and theatrically
lated notions of dramatic *decorum. In his De- successful career as a verse dramatist culmi-
fence of Poesy (written ca. , pub. ), Philip nating in Brand () and Peer Gynt (),
Sidney complains about the mingling of verse Henrik Ibsen, e.g., decided to address a broader
and prose, which implies a “mongrel” blend- contemp. audience about mod. social life with
ing of tragedy and comedy; and Félix Lope de plays written in prose. And yet, while some
Vega’s El arte nuevo de hacer comedias () contemporaries complained about the unpoetic
similarly encourages Sp. poets to avoid blend- superficiality of Ibsen’s lang., his prose—rigor-
ing high and low subjects, suggesting different ously impoverished of decoration—enables the
verse forms as appropriate to different events: slightest nuance to gain richly “poetic” depth:
décimas for complaints, *sonnets for those the icy, black water of Nora’s imagined suicide,
waiting in expectation, *tercets for serious mat- Hedda’s “vine leaves in his hair,” the secret de-
ters, and redondillas for love. Expanding Lope’s mons of will and desire that flay Solness’s flesh.
principles, a typical role in one of Pedro Calde- Indeed, the attraction of verse remained strong:
rón de la Barca’s plays moves through a range Ibsen’s great rival August Strindberg wrote prose
of verse forms, each appropriate to the ethical and verse dramas throughout his career, as did
and dramatic situation of the moment. Rather other playwrights now sometimes remem-
than multiplying verse forms, th-c. Fr. theater bered for their naturalistic plays, such as Ger-
relies on the poet’s mastery of the *alexandrine hart Hauptmann. Maurice Maeterlinck wrote
couplet, the vehicle of heroic clamor in Pierre symbolic dramas in an image-laden prose; and,
Corneille, of balanced wit in Molière, and of without resorting directly to verse, Frank We-
probing ethical dilemma in Jean Racine, while dekind frequently experimented with lang. in
Eng.-lang. verse drama typically relies on the ways that resisted a strict division between nat-
more fluid informality of *blank verse. uralistic prose and more evocative poetry.
The association between verse and high, se- Foregrounding the artifice of the play’s verbal
rious, “tragic” drama in early mod. Europe is dimension, mod. verse drama resists the sub-
a matter of convention, regardless of whether ordination of its lang. to the representational
writers like Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, “surface” characteristic of naturalism’s attention
Jonson, or Racine considered themselves part to everyday life. For this reason, in the th c.
of a “poetic” heritage. The rising prestige of dramatic poetry becomes increasingly cognate
Shakespeare as a poet in the later th and with a deeply antitheatrical impulse visible in
th cs., alongside the democratization of lit- the work of a range of playwrights largely con-
eracy and lit., lends dramatic poetry its mod. tinuing the trad. linking verse to elevated sub-
inflection, the sense that the value of a play’s ject matter and philosophical introspection:
76 DRAMATIC POETRY

Edmond Rostand’s durable Cyrano de Bergerac to be woven into the conceptual practices of
() and the plays of Stephen Phillips, Max- performance. Yet while mod. poets sometimes
well Anderson, Christopher Fry, and Paul assume that poetry should govern the practices
Claudel, among many others. Dramatic poetry, of the stage, the most enduring experiments in
though, also provided an alternative means of dramatic poetry tend in a different direction.
using lang. to impel the potential innovation Yeats’s Plays for Dancers coordinates an imag-
of theatrical experience; here, the varied use istic moment of intense, verbalized perception
of verse and prose in the plays of W. B. Yeats, against the parallel, speechless, physical expres-
Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Auden’s collaborations sion of dance to music. Rather than taking
with Christopher Isherwood, as well as the the physical expression of theater merely to
more experimental work of Gertrude Stein and illustrate the verbal “meanings” of the poetry,
Samuel Beckett, charts an effort not to with- Yeats’s plays provoke a rich reciprocity between
draw dramatic poetry from theatricality but to the ultimately incompatible discourses of lang.
use lang. to explore new means of articulating and movement, poetry and embodiment in the
writing with stage action. The intercalation of theater.
different verse forms, or of verse with prose, also Among playwrights, Eliot most searchingly
jibes with the critical disorientation at the heart attempted to chart the extent to which it was
of Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (usually possible for dramatic composition to alter, even
translated as “alienation effect” or “distancing revivify, the circumstances of performance.
effect”), visible in his own plays like Saint Joan Although Eliot’s writing about dramatic po-
of the Stockyards () and The Resistible Rise of etry spans his career—from “The Possibility
Arturo Ui () and in the function of *song of a Poetic Drama” and “Rhetoric and Poetic
throughout his plays. The use of verse as a means Drama,” both of which appeared in The Sacred
of emphasizing the theatrical work of dramatic Wood (), to Poetry and Drama ()—his
lang. sustains much of Peter Weiss’s work (incl. obituary for the music-hall star Marie Lloyd ex-
his best known play, The Persecution and Assas- presses his canniest vision of theater, the sense
sination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the that the “working man” who saw Lloyd in the
Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the music hall and “joined in the chorus was him-
Direction of the Marquis de Sade, widely known self performing part of the act; he was engaged
as Marat/Sade []), as well as embodying a in that collaboration of the audience with the
postcolonial concern for the politics of lang. artist which is necessary in all art and most ob-
and performance genres in several of Wole viously in dramatic art” (Selected Essays). From
Soyinka’s plays, notably The Lion and the Jewel his early dramatic monologues onward, Eliot’s
(); in Aimé Césaire’s adaptation of Shake- poetic imagination engaged with drama; turn-
speare, A Tempest (); and often in the plays ing to the writing of plays, he explored how
of Derek Walcott. Verbal experiment sustains writing might galvanize the social ritual of the-
much contemp. dramatic writing, often writing atrical performance, might provide a means to
conceived to generate political or social friction shape that collaboration among poet, perform-
in performance: Caryl Churchill’s satiric Serious ers, and participating audience through the
Money (), John Arden’s drama, the brilliant process of playing.
use of verse and song alongside the prose of Ed- But while Eliot typically takes dramatic po-
ward Bond’s plays. Several playwrights whose etry as synonymous with verse drama, his most
lang. is formally inventive yet not restricted ei- experimental play, Murder in the Cathedral
ther to formal or *free verse—Thomas Bernhard, (), demonstrates that it is not the difference
Heiner Müller, María Irene Fornes, Suzan-Lori between verse and prose that identifies the force
Parks—are precisely engaged in the problem of of poetic drama but the ways lang. engages with
dramatic poetry. the means of theater. Murder in the Cathedral is
largely written in prose, using different modes
III. Dramatic Poetry and Performance Theory. of written discourse—the Chorus’ rhythmi-
Given that different performance conventions cally chanted verse, Thomas’s prose sermon, the
construct the force of lang. in and as perfor- Knights’ Shavian apology—to afford different
mance, what does poetic writing contribute to opportunities for collaboration in the dramatic
drama? In one sense, poetry lends its distinctive event. In Poetry and Drama, Eliot confessed that
verbal density to the dramatic event, creating he may have been chasing a “mirage,” a verse
an opportunity for form, imagery, and meter drama at once composed “of human action and