Random words do not poetry make, and you can quote me on that

"Quandoque," sagely said Quintus Horatius Flaccus, "Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus." He was commiserating with me when I interviewed him in Rome some years ago.

In the course of our long conversation, I had confessed to several errors in my weekly column on English usage. The great old Roman gently sympathized. "Sometimes," he said, "even good old Homer nods."

Well, I nodded inexcusably last year. On one occasion I somehow conflated Robert Burns (1759-96) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). A dozen readers, all of them named McTavish, McDuff or MacDougal, descended upon me. As penance, they ordered me to read the whole of Scott's "Pibroch of Donald Dhu" and six cantos of "The Lady of the Lake." I was also to recite Burns' ode to a mouse, beginning:

"Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O what a panic's in thy breastie."

Having said my penance, I now further confess to a regrettable attempt to quote Robert W. Service (1874-1958). As a swarm of readers have reminded me, it was the lady best known as Lou who watched the luck of Dangerous Dan McGrew. And in another of those ballads from the Yukon, it was that other Scotsman, Sam McGee, who was cremated on the marge of Lake Lebarge. Sophisticated poetry lovers will recall that Sam arose from the Arctic pyre to say it was the first time he'd been warm.

It's a little late, but never too late, to quote some lines for the New Year. Please read the few lines that immediately follow:

"He was the one man I met up in the woods that stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight, fifty yards off, I could not tell how much of the strange tripod was a man. His body, bowed horizontal, was supported equally by legs at one end, by a rake at the other: Thus he rested, far less like a man than his wheelbarrow in profile was like a pig ... "

Does it grab you? Let me try again:

He was the one man I met up in the woods /

That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight, /

Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much /

Of the strange tripod was a man. His body, /

Bowed horizontal, was supported equally /

By legs at one end, by a rake at the other: /

Thus he rested, far less like a man than /

His wheelbarrow in profile was like a pig.

These musings were the work of Edward Thomas (1878-1917), an English poet quoted by Robert Pincus in The Washington Post two weeks ago. Was this "poetry"? Reluctantly, I have to admit that it probably qualifies. By elementary definition, poetry is "the production of a poet." Moreover, say the sages of Merriam-Webster, poetry is writing "that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional experience through meaning, sound and rhythm."

It is a measure of my ignorance that I had never heard of Edward Thomas until Pincus quoted him. Thomas never made it to Bartlett's, but he is quoted five times in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Notably, three of the five selections are rhymed. Some of the wind is thus sucked out of my contemptuous sails.

Even so, let me persist in insisting that poetry must have at least some of the aspects of a traditional poem — specifically, rhyme or measured cadence. Stripped of typographical trappings, Thomas' poem ranks with the musings of a talented high-school senior. Or, to borrow from Truman Capote's comment on the work of Jack Kerouac, "That isn't writing, that's typing."

The Writer's Art by James J. Kilpatrick appears Monday in Northwest Life. Address comments or questions to: Writer's Art, c/o Newsroom, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70,Seattle, WA 98111.