Form and Function of In Memoriam

I thought Tennyson’s poem XLVIII was interesting as he seems to be making an argument for the utility of the highly experimental form of his overall work similarly to how Wordsworth defended the experimental form of Lyrical Ballads in the Preface of the book. Tennyson argues that his work should not simply be viewed as a series of discrete poems each containing separate arguments or as one long poem. Instead he asserts that he is better able to unearth deeper meaning by stringing together various connected perspectives and thoughts about a concept or range of concepts in an aggregation of shorter poems. Using this form, Tennyson can divulge his fleeting thoughts and emotional experiences born in various periods of introspection during which he is enveloped in various moods. Each lay serves to add to the overall themes/meanings of the work (though the work also cannot not be viewed as a single holistic poem). I think Tennyson choose this form because it mirrors the way he approaches and experience sorrow. As he explains in poem XVI, sorrow is a complicated emotion that manifests itself differently with each experience and seems to take various different forms. Tennyson seems to feel and think about sorrow in bursts and comes to different conclusions each time as he approaches it in from different perspectives.