Clerihew the same work, published in 1925, included a "Preface to the New Edition" in 11 stanzas, each in clerihew form. One stanza ran: Clerihew A clerihew () is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem's subject, usually a famous person put in an absurd light, or revealing something unknown or spurious about them. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the rhymes are often forced. The line length and metre are irregular. Bentley invented the clerihew in school and then popularized it in books. One of his best known
Harmonium (poetry collection) particular as "an excellent example" of poetry that is "untruthful, and nauseating to read". Favoring "Harmonium"s "sensualism", as exampled in "Metaphors of a Magnifico", marks a divide among critics, for there are many who, like Helen Vendler, champion the later poetry. "I think, with others, that Stevens' powers increased with age", she writes. Josephson chooses these lines from "Banal Sojourn" to illustrate Stevens' poetry of sensuousness: <poem> The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black. The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air. Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a