SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

12. Others are “After a Line by Cavafy,” “The Next Poem,” and “Lives of the Great
Composers.” The “Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as Refrain” appears in Interrogations
at Noon (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2001) and “Round” in the Collected Poems of
Weldon Kees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1976). In a note on “Elegy” Gioia
identifies the sources of the two refrains giving the proverbs as they first appeared in
French. He states, “All of the incidents and quotations in the poem are true” (71).
13. Pfohl: 98.
14. Pfohl: 103.
15. See Carol Kino, “The Key to Dreams” Art and Auction May 2002: 63-73.
16. Pfohl: 98.
17. Pfohl: 102.
18. Anthony Hecht, The Hidden Law. The Poetry of W. H. Auden. (Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1993): 372. See also, Joost Daalder, “W.H. Auden’s ‘The Shield of Achilles’ and its
Sources,” A.U.M.L.A.: The Journal of the Australian Universities Modern Language
Association. Vol. 42(August 1974): 186-198; Bill Mahire, “W. H. Auden’s ‘The Shield of
Achilles’: A Note on Source Criticism”, A.U.M.L.A. Vol.58 (November 1982): 164-169;
and Claude Summers, “ ‘Or one could weep because another wept’: The Counterplot of
Auden’s ‘The Shield of Achilles’” in Journal of English and Germanic Philology Vol.83
No.2 (April 1984): 214-232. Lillian Feder in Ancient Myth and Modern Poetry
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971) explicates the “Shield of Achilles”, pp. 336-7, noting
“Nowhere else does Auden use myth more effectively to arouse emotions through illusion
and ironic contrasts.” Eva Brann in “Hephaestus’ World: The Shield,” American Poetry
Review November/December 2002: 41-42 describes the images on the shield as a
platform for interpreting its use in Auden’s verse. She states “ What Auden’s great
revision of Hephaestus’ shield teaches by contrast through its godless and heroless space
(which is no world, just a level expanse) is this: The Homeric world, the poet’s and the
artisan’s world, is in its visible surface indefeasibly beautiful, no matter what happens
within it” (42). The poem comes from W. H. Auden, The Shield of Achilles. (New York:
Random House, 1955): 35-37.
19. Pfohl: 100.
20. Pfohl: 99.
21. Prown: 71.
22. Pfohl: 99.
23. Turner, emailed copy of poem to me. For a brief account of Radnoti’s life and his impact
as a poet, see the special feature “In America: Translation, Please”, Poets & Writers
Magazine (November/December 2002): 50-51. This interview with translator, Emery
George, mentions Radnoti’s metrical virtuosity in particular: “Radnoti writes with a
special predilection in classical and other established meters: the actylic hexameter line
and the alexandrine are two special favorites of his” (51).
24. Prown: 83.
25. Pfohl: 98.
26. Pfohl: 98.
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