Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Milton Wilson

Critical Essay by Milton Wilson

Certainly you don't have to talk to Smith for long to realize that he relishes the thought of being odd classical man out in a society of romantics, and, from the jacket blurb of his Collected Poems, we once again learn, presumably with the author's sanction, that he knows how to be "austerely classic" in his own graceful way. It's something of a let-down to discover how merely Parnassian or decadent or imagistic his classicism can be. (pp. 11-12)

More obtrusive and far less legendary in the Smith terminology is "metaphysical" and all the phrases that Eliot … has taught us to trail along behind it: the "disparate experience", "passion and thought" or "sense and intellect", "fused" into a "unified sensibility". (p. 12)

Do unskilful classification and a perfunctory terminology really stand in the way of Smith's critical achievement? Not, I think, if we recognize where his real and remarkable...
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