The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.

All those who perish in the wrath of God Here meet together out of every land;And ready are they to pass o’er the river, Because celestial Justice spurs them on, So that their fear is...

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn....