Auden on Hardy and Free Verse
Given our bracing exchange here, Zach Wells will no doubt enjoy this quote from The Dyer’s Hand:
"My first Master was Thomas Hardy, and I think I was very lucky in my choice. He was a good poet, perhaps a great one, but not too good. Much as I loved him, even I could see that his diction was often clumsy and forced and that a lot of his poems were plain bad. This gave me hope where a flawless poet might have made me dispair…his metrical variety, his fondness for complicated stanza forms, were an invaluable training in the craft of making. I am also thankful that my first Master did not write in free verse for I might then have been tempted to believe that free verse is easier to write than stricter forms, whereas I now know it is infinitely more difficult."
