I've been posting irritating comments on Mike Snider's Formal Blog. He's been remarkably tolerant of me so far, perhaps because I can get inside of that mentality and debate on his terms--to some exent. In other words, assuming that one wants to write in the tradition of Auden, Larkin, Wilbur, I believe I am literate enough in this tradition to offer a cogent critique. I've read the canon of British poetry from Chaucer to Hughes. I studied with Thom Gunn for a brief time long long ago. I audited a course in contemporary British poetry from W.S. DiPiero at Stanford. I have an equally adequate background in American poetry in all traditions.

I remember a poem by Anthony Hecht on the great Lisbon earthquake, I believe it was a translation, that I read in the Davis, CA Library when I was maybe 15 years old. It was fairly long, written in heroic couplets, and quite riveting.