{"id":8717,"date":"2008-12-15T19:35:45","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T00:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8717"},"modified":"2015-04-06T09:41:51","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T13:41:51","slug":"the-books-the-norton-anthology-of-modern-and-contemporary-poetry-elinor-wylie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8717","title":{"rendered":"The Books: \u201cThe Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry\u201d \u2013 Elinor Wylie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"15210828.JPG\"Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry<\/p>\n

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 1: Modern Poetry<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair<\/p>\n

I love her stuff. I am not familiar with the full scope of her work, but what I do know really strikes my fancy. I wonder if A.S. Byatt used her (or at least her verse) as some of the inspiration for the poems Christabel Lamotte writes in Possession<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. Unlike the other free verse modernists of the day, Wylie liked structure and form. She was also a novelist. She was famous in her own lifetime, and rather cagey about her earlier work (which had also been published). She seems to have had a mixture of being incredibly shy and incredibly open. She was mortified that her earliest verses had been published (I mean, God forbid any of my writing had been published at age 18 – I’d never live it down) – but she kept working, and kept publishing. Her novels were very successful. She did not live long.<\/p>\n

\"elinor%20wylie.jpg\"<\/p>\n

She had a rather scandal-driven life, leaving her first husband and her child to elope with another man, who was also married. She followed her own star, similar to Edna St. Vincent Millay (who comes off rather horribly in the beautiful recent biography of her<\/a>\"\" – I mean, I LOVE her work – but man, glad I didn’t know that woman – no married man was safe as long as she was around!) – and Wylie, too, flouted the social customs of the day. (She is often compared to Edna St. Vincent Millay – something that I hope is not just because they share the same gender. Millay’s sonnets have an antique feeling of absolute perfection in them, which somehow does not lessen the heartache … but unlike her contemporaries, Millay was not experimenting willy-nilly with free verse left and right. She kept to the old forms. So did Wylie. That was probably why she was more popular in her own lifetime than more trailblazing poets who have left a deeper mark and are studied in universities the world over. Wylie wrote in a way that was recognizable as poetry to the public at large).<\/p>\n

The Norton Anthology also compares her to Wallace Stevens, which I think is a more apt analogy than Millay. Wylie writes about objects and the senses and images with an exquisite clarity, almost like she is looking through a microscope – and you just don’t know how she can bear to see things so clearly. It is very Wallace Stevens-esque.<\/p>\n

Not as well-known now as her contemporaries, she is well worth a look if you haven’t read her before.<\/p>\n

I haven’t read any of her novels.<\/p>\n

I love the poem “Incantation”. It is what really calls to mind the lesbian poet of A.S. Byatt’s great novel Possession<\/i> – the short little lines (that call to mind what Sylvia Plath’s later poems all looked like on the page – “Lady Lazarus”, “Daddy”, “Fever 103” – see what I mean?<\/a> – they all have that short box-like structure, each line about 3 or 4 words long – it’s rather chilling, even just to look at. It makes the poem look<\/i> breathless, if that makes sense. I also love how the title of Wylie’s poem actually describes what she is attempting in the poem – and she does it through image.<\/p>\n

She’s a real poet’s poet, I think. Her structure is immaculate.<\/p>\n

\nIncantation<\/u><\/p>\n

A white well
\nIn a black cave;
\nA bright shell
\nIn a dark wave.<\/p>\n

A white rose
\nBlack brambles hood;
\nSmooth bright snows
\nIn a dark wood.<\/p>\n

A flung white glove
\nIn a dark fight;
\nA white dove
\nOn a wild black night.<\/p>\n

A white door
\nIn a dark lane;
\nA bright core
\nTo bitter black pain.<\/p>\n

A white hand
\nWaved from dark walls;
\nIn a burnt black land
\nBright waterfalls.<\/p>\n

A bright spark
\nWhere black ashes are;
\nIn the smothering dark
\nOne white star.<\/p>\n

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