Though Wilde mocked his pronouncements of sexual deviance, Swinburne quarried queer desire for a reinvention of the metaphysical tradition. Even among Victorianists, Swinburne is not written on or read much nowadays, but looking back nearly one hundred years, to the critics who were weaned on the poet of Putney (Swinburne in his later years) and who weaned off him into the dazzle of Donne, may … Continue reading 107. (Algernon Charles Swinburne)
She shares with Eugenio Montale a novel sense of what epiphany a poem can or should seek or record. She only knew the Italian’s work once her career was underway, but she remarks in two letters to Lowell, on his publication of Imitations, that she is especially curious to read the Montale translations. Perhaps she suspected a kindred spirit. The sense one finds in both poets—and the … Continue reading 93. (Elizabeth Bishop)
Born this day, December 24, in 1822, Matthew Arnold would have today celebrated his one hundredth and ninety second birthday, had he been a tortoise or a koi. A man, he lived to sixty six. T.S. Eliot said that he was more of an advocate for criticism than a critic, but that would mean a great many Victorians were not sure what criticism was; R.H … Continue reading 52. (Matthew Arnold)
Bagehot, a man in the know, confides to his readership: “One of his greatest admirers once owned to us that he seldom or never began a new poem without looking on in advance, and foreseeing with caution what length of intellectual advance he was about to commence.” Does any other major poet have a posse of admirers so willing, even eager, to exonerate admiration by … Continue reading 8. (Robert Browning)
