Appendix Summary and Analysis

Hollander ends the book with an appendix made up of examples of other poets who have composed verse about the structure of poetry, as he has done throughout his own book. He begins with a poem by Alexander Pope, who criticizes the common practice of judging poetry by how closely it sticks to the form it adopts:

But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

and smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;

In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,

Hollander agrees with pope's assessment that it is foolish to only judge a poem by its "voice." Later in the poem, Pope writes:

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense. (p. 69)

The verse must fit the subject, Pope explains. When the...