stration of fundamental human experience. The following poems will be considered in this regard: "A Plea for a League of Sleep," from Stranger; "If Anything Should Arise, It Isn't I," from Versus; and "I Can Hardly Wait for the Sandman," from Get There. The manifest common feature that these poems share is that they deal with sleep, but in fact the treatment of sleep in each poem is as a springboard to more general commentary on the significance of the social environment in which sleep becomes an issue.
In the very title of "A Plea for a League of Sleep," the poet makes the peculiar suggestion that there ought to be an organization--the league--comprising the lazybones of the world. In five iambic tetrameter eight-line-couplet stanzas, he develops the view that, given all the misery that the wide-awake peop
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