Several people here have remarked on the formal timidity of some of the
poets associated with the New Formalism, and I have to agree, in part --
though I confess I don't see much adventurous spirit anywhere else,
either.
But if you're not familiar with Sam Gwynn (he publishes as R. S. Gwynn),
you really owe it yourselves to find a copy of No Word of Farewell.
There's a brief selection (not exactly the poems I'd choose) here:
http://members.aol.com/poetrynet/month/archive/gwynn/why.html
-- a villanelle about dogs, a sonnet, abba quatrains, and a dramatic
monologue in rhyming couplets
Another poet with a wide formal range is Charles Martin. He's harder to
find online (there are a few of his translations of Catullus at
http://www.onlinepoetryclassroom.org/summer/index.cfm?prmPageID=70 ),
but there's a review by Robert Hass of his first book, Room for Error,
here:
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmarticleID=604
And a review of his latest, What the Darkness Proposes, here;
http://home.earthlink.net/~arthur505/rev0197.html
The latter contains the standard gratuitous attacks on Pound, Eliot, and
C. K. Williams.
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