Great Regulars: For the reader, there is the satisfaction of

cutting straight to the emotional core, to the moments of revelation and epiphany. As in a short story, but even more rigorously, every detail has to earn its narrative place.

This week's choice, "What the Mountain Saw" by Philip Gross, is an exemplary story-poem that demonstrates the art of saying enough but no more than enough. It seems to encapsulate the entire emotional story of a family--and, as a few politicians have recently twigged, the family story also tells society's story, or one of its stories.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: What the Mountain Saw by Philip Gross

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Whether a writer is drawing on personal experience or literary research, imagination is crucial, and Shelley approaches the task with great imaginative flair. First, he sets a fictional scene, introducing a second character, a kind of Ancient Mariner, though one with the gift of brevity, to give his "personal account" of the ruined sculpture. Virtually all the sonnet is spoken by the traveller. His tale is strongly pictorial, and moves with the fluency and drive of recollection. Shelley's free, "romantic" way with the sonnet-form--the unusual pattern of the rhymes, and the presence of half-rhymes--is wholly appropriate.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: The Romantic poets: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
also Carol Rumens: The Guardian: The Romantic poets: The Human Image and The Divine Image by William Blake
also Carol Rumens: The Guardian: The Romantic poets: Recollections of Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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