Records of inwardness have to be transformed if a poem is to be made. . . .

The poem offers a signature, a set of signs, rather than a sentimental journey. [cf.] Pound's "Don'ts for Imagists"--"an absolute foundation stone of contemporary American writing" (that is: "direct treatment," "musical phrase," "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time"). This much is stated in the Spring 1969 issue of Contemporary Literature. In the Stony Brook essay it is affirmed: "a curtailment of arbitrariness." That this could not imply a curtailment of intellectual and emotional range is also clear--for example in "The Menage." Out of a close definition of six yellow jonquils, and a delight in them, develops an extraordinary fusion of eye, sexuality and meditation on Nature, in an augmenting structure which only poetry can sustain through such varied levels of stringency and amusement. Feelings for the non-human, the botanical, are appreciated within human appreciation of the sexuality of such pleasures. Rakosi's poems that include sexuality and his love of women are usually amused, sometimes sardonic, observations on male and phallic assumptions. Puck or Cupid keeps them from solemnity.