Charles Martin at The Hudson Review:
The first part of my title comes from, and refers to, W. H. Auden, who once said, “When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.” The “Imagiste,” spelled in the French manner that Ezra Pound was so fond of, is, I hope to demonstrate, Donald Justice, a poet who wrote in, and cherished, traditional forms but who had been deeply influenced by Modernism. For a long time I thought of Justice as a traditionalist, ignoring those times when he seemed to be very much in the other camp. My view now is that Donald Justice was one of the few poets of his generation who managed to succeed in combining Modernist technique and traditional form.
The ruminations that eventually led me to this conclusion had their beginnings some years back at an exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum called “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties.” The exhibition consisted of paintings and sculptures by black and white, figurative and abstract artists in support of the Civil Rights movement of that period.
more here.
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