Pound felt himself to be in an earthly hell, in the cage in which the Pisan Cantos were written. But … More

There is no sine qua non for poetic success, but it is difficult to imagine making sense of whether a … More

In an earlier post on Song of Solomon I tried to make sense of the presence of melodrama in the … More

Note: looking back at this post, it seems to show how “patterns” by being everything are also nothing—the paraphrases of … More

          The relations of poetry to pattern are diverse. A poem is patterned by conventions of rhyme, exists in a … More

Modernism is a disputed word. Critics nowadays remind us that there are many modernisms, and rightly, since there are many … More

In my last post on Stevie Smith, I suggested that the poet writes from a perspective of innocence, translating into … More

It might be tempting to think Stevie Smith is putting on an act; with such a thought, we might be … More