Volume 10, Number 11 · June 6, 1968
Objects Solitary and Terrible
By Denis Donoghue
Live or Die
by Anne Sexton
Houghton Mifflin, 90 pp., $4.00
The Lice
by W.S. Merwin
Atheneum, 80 pp., $1.95 (paper)
Reasons for Moving
by Mark Strand
Atheneum, 80 pp., $1.95 (paper)
Love Letters from Asia
by Sandra Hochman
Viking, 54 pp., $3.95
In the fourth chapter of Le Degré Zéro de L'Ecriture Roland Barthes proposes a distinction between classical language and modern language. 'The economy of classical language,' he says, is 'relational, which means that in it words are abstracted as much as possible in the interest of relationships.' The words do not claim any special character in their own behalf: 'no word has a density by itself, it is hardly the sign of a thing, but rather the means of conveying a connexion.' In modern language the fixed relations are dissolved, and words are cast upon a new condition; they may do what they will, because they are not obliged to do anything in particular. The object of a modern poem is not to define or qualify relations already conventionally agreed, but to cause 'an explosion of words.'
Review, 3370 words
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