Coda

the risks of "freedom, truth and skill"

Martin Middeke

Christoph Reinfandt

pp. 201-208

in: Gareth Farmer, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Farmer argues that Stéphane Mallarmé's work offers an analogy to Forrest-Thomson's faith in the hard-won results of poetic labour and the necessity of conventions. Forrest-Thomson shares both Mallarmé's sense of the crisis facing poetry in the context of theoretical and poetic developments, but also his abiding faith in conventional forms. To hold such antiquated beliefs about the value of poetic form in the context of burgeoning post-modern practice, Farmer argues, was bold and risky, and necessarily made Forrest-Thomson a late modernist. Farmer argues that Forrest-Thomson's work exemplifies a creative integration of traditional and experimental techniques, concluding that the poem, "In Memoriam" captures her late modernist admixture of humour and despair, and her deft illustration of the capacity of conventional poetic form to distil lyrical sentiment.