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ALTHOUGH THE NEW FORMALIST movement is much discussed these days, the poetry of one of the finest American formalist poets tends to be significantly overlooked. Although Thomas Carper has had two books published by Johns Hopkins University Press since 1991, the 67-year-old poet's work has been reviewed in only one national American publication (a page-and-a-half review by R. S. Gwynn in the Hudson Review). Ironically, the most serious critical analysis of Carper's work has been published in Germany. A recent issue of Anglistik featured a 14-page overview of American New Formalism by Franz Link, one of Germany's leading Americanists; the article's first half discussed the writers usually associated with that movement, and the article's second half was devoted entirely to Carper's poetry.
His poetry resembles Robert Frost's in embodying clear thought in clear statement, ranging in a spectrum from homey exposition to elegant restraint. Though Carper's poetry encompasses a varied range of focus from the amusing to the ironic to the poignant to the cosmic, readers in search of the stylistically pyrotechnic or avant-garde should be warned that Carper's poetry consistently demonstrates an affinity for Apollonian moderation in tone and traditionalism in rhyme and meter.
Carper's easygoing equanimity and clarity of statement and logic are exemplified in "Sisyphus' Pet Rock" (From Nature), which also demonstrates Carper's quietly ironic sense of humor and tendency to express ideas through parables:
In part, "Sisyphus' Pet Rock" distills an attitude of acceptance which pervades Carper's work, in both his amusing and serious poems. His poems attempt to maintain a basic optimism in the face of the many potential trials provided by life and acknowledged in his poetry, as he himself writes elsewhere, "...The structure of a happy destiny/ That finds fulfillment in the smallest things...." ("Kingdoms"). Furthermore, "Sisyphus' PetRock" distills Carper's workmanly attitude toward the writing of poetry. Like his portrayal of Sisyphus, Carper tends to write one line of iambic pentameter after another until one sonnet is completed, at which time the rock rolls to the hill's bottom for the process cheerfully to resume. While Carper's two books contain several deviations from the English sonnet, the deviations are rare, and no poem in either of the collections deviates from iambic pentameter, as Carper writes, "...And now I number,...