Volume 29, Number 14 · September 23, 1982
The Creeping Griffon
By Helen Vendler
Hundreds of Fireflies
by Brad Leithauser
Knopf, 71 pp., $11.50
Monolithos: Poems, 1962 and 1982
by Jack Gilbert
Knopf, 93 pp., $11.50
Stylization is easy to see in the visual arts. The deer on the belt buckle is recognizably a deer, but it has been curved into an oval shape, its legs bent under its body, its neck elongated and tucked toward its breast, its shoulders folded to conform to the left side of the buckle, its flanks curved to align themselves with the right side. It is a deer, but no deer was ever seen to curl itself up in so symmetrical a way; and yet the forms have not been stretched out of plausibility entirely. They touch the limits of contortion without looking contorted. On the facades of Gothic cathedrals the vertical body of the saint is still a body, though stretched and stylized into something resembling a column. In visual forms, the mimetic is subdued to the geometric with such grace that the geometric seems almost an invention of the mimetic—as though the deer had found an oval way of being a deer, the saint a columnar way of being a body.
Review, 3370 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |