The lecture focused on the notion of ‘late style’ across a range of twentieth-century
American poets. Professor Bacigalupo began by discussing Robert Frost’s preface to
his Collected Poems (1939), ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’, and William Carlos Williams’
prologue to Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920), which both address the plight of
modernity and its relation to poetics and the task of the writer. Professor Bacigalupo
then led doctoral students through readings of poems by Frost, Wallace Stevens,
Elizabeth Bishop and Ezra Pound, considering the implications of each text for wider
questions about style, the modern and tradition.
10 maggio 2022