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“To Helen, Swimming” or Poetry Unveiled
“To Helen, Swimming” or Poetry Unveiled

Author(s): Sorin Ștefănescu
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Editura Universitatii LUCIAN BLAGA din Sibiu
Keywords: “failed poet;” Lyotard; “grand narrative;” “little narratives;” conventional; modernist; tropes; syncretism; synesthesia.

Summary/Abstract: The paper looks at Helen: A Courtship, a sequence of sixteen poems written by William Faulkner as a young man, and attempts a personal reading of the first one, “To Helen, Swimming.” The author starts his investigation from the premise that criticism attempted to dismiss Faulkner’s poetry as unremarkable relying too much on what it could deduce from the poems and too little on what it could induce into them. After briefly establishing the circumstances leading to the writing of this sequence, a line-for-line analysis of the poem is endeavoured, covering most of the paper.

  • Issue Year: 13/2013
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 66-73
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: English