Great Regulars: There is also something of the lexical

and linguistic pliancy of Beckett in [Peter] Porter's image of "end-stopped beauty". Only by coining the noun "Lessness" did Beckett feel he had found a means of overcoming the restrictiveness of the preposition "Sans", and conveying infinite absence, or the idea of absence. Here, by using the compound adjective "end-stopped", Porter finds a way to define the ineffable "sheer idea".

Not the Thing Itself but Ideas About It

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Not the Thing Itself but Ideas About It

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