23 pages
Published 1920
Read March 19
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
According to Wikipedia, which I had to consult before reading this 600 line poem, Paris is a “lost masterpiece of modernism” depicting a walk through the post-war city. Mirrlees, whom I know as the author of Lud-in-the-Mist, employs concrete poetry, overheard fragments of conversation, advertisements, musical notes, and a cacophony of imagery to submerge the reader in a sensorium, bursting with sound and startling glimmers of texture:
Little boys in black overalls whose hands, sticky with play, are like the newly furled leaves of the horse-chestnuts ride round and round on wooden horses till their heads turn.
Not everything holds up, and some of the contemporary terms used are regrettable. (Seriously, you couldn’t go 600 lines without dropping the N-word?) Dated elements aside, for a poem written in 1919 and published in 1920, it was impressive, or at least worth a read.
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