My friend Kristin, who used to be my MA student in Colorado, now works in Nebraska. She just sent me a very beautiful powerpoint, containing many poems by the beloved Charlotte Smith.
If you don't know Smith's Elegiac Sonnets then treat yourself. You can easily download the pdf of the first edition these days. It's a 108 sonnet sequence (curiously the same number as there are beads on a Buddhist rosary).
Each sonnet is a masterpiece of moving while standing still, of rocking back and forth in a grief space. They really build. It's like listening to a very long song by The Cure, maybe “Pictures of You.” I wish I'd recorded my Romantics class from the spring because we explored this.
Smith basically wrote the book on Goth style, which is still with us today. Her melancholia is just what the eco-doctor ordered.
I now have the pleasure of imagining what Kristin said about the sonnets, as she didn't send me her talk...
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