Hayden Carruth's beautiful "To Artemis" … is a poem of formal address to the moon goddess…. The poem is dignified, sharply perceived, thoughtful, translucent, and reverent. It is in free verse with irregular sections. Carruth has a good and practiced ear, and has worked in accentual-syllabic meters as well as free verse. The following passage is exciting in motion, sound, interworkings:

           flakes of light whirling away, a shower—
           moonflakes, sparks
           scurrying through dark trees.

The section stands out of context because it, like the section beginning "Snow lined," is in a different kind of free verse from the rest of the poem, which is soberly conversational, having no base but several times moving toward or into rising pentameter or trimeter, as in the beautiful ending:

        Whatever we are, these reflections, let us
        change them now, let us be silent, cold,
        let us be autonomous, bright,
 
        in this place so...