Q. Is this structure really as self-explanatory as it seems?
A. Yes.
But this does not mean that poets have not used this structure to great effect. Check some out:
“Odi et amo,” by Catullus (click on the English translation)
“An Astronomical Question,” by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Landinsky [scroll down]
“How Do I Listen?,” by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Landinsky
“An Old Musician,” by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Landinsky
“The Tender Mouth,” by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Landinsky (in The Gift (New York: Penguin Compass, 1999): 246).
“My God, where is that ancient heat towards Thee…,” by George Herbert
“Post-Coitum Tristesse: A Sonnet,” by Brad Leithauser
Sonnet 65 (“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea…”), by William Shakespeare
“Dramatis Personae,” by Christina Davis (in Forth a Raven (Farmington, Maine: Alice James Books, 2006): 41).
“Evolution,” by Eliza Griswold (in Wideawake Field (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007): 66).
“Spring and Fall,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
“For ‘Our Lady of the Rocks,’ by Leonardo da Vinci,” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
“The Mock Song,” by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
A helpful commentary on this poem by Barry Goldensohn can be found in Dark Horses: Poets on Overlooked Poems, edited by Joy Katz and Kevin Prufer (Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 2007): 198-200).
“Sonnet for Bonnie,” by Darren Wershler-Henry
“Expostulation and Reply,” by William Wordsworth
“Was It,” by Adam Zagajewski (in Eternal Enemies, translated by Clare Cavanagh (New York: FSG, 2008): 22).
Some variations on the question-and-answer structure:
Sometimes the question comes after the answer, as in
“Dark-Grained, Surprisingly Heavy,” by Jane Hirshfield (in Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems (New York: HarperCollins, 2001): 30).
Sometimes a poem that contains only questions also includes its own answer (or answers), as in
One answer seems to come from the speaker of “The Tyger” when s/he realizes that the tiger’s creator also may (in a dualism so shocking as to be beyond the speaker’s ability to interrogate it) have created the lamb…
