SOURCE: “‘A Dark Question Answered Yes’: The Poems of William Meredith,” in Three Contemporary Poets of New England: William Meredith, Philip Booth, and Peter Davison, Twayne, 1983, pp. 6-63.

In the following excerpt, Rotella traces the thematic development of Meredith's verse.

Theme, Technique, and Development

William Meredith's major theme involves the efforts of imagination and intellect to order the chaos of the self and of the world, to overcome the resistance of life and experience to significance and form. He writes, in the phrase of Wallace Stevens, a poetry “of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice.” He seeks an art and life of meaning and value. The goal of this search does not alter appreciably as Meredith's work develops. What does alter is the degree of confidence he feels in any of the search's many methods and results, and his identification and understanding of what...