SOURCE: "The Architecture of Vision," in Poetry, Vol. LXX, No. 6, September, 1947, pp. 324-28.

Ghiselin is an American educator, poet, essayist, and critic. Below, he reviews Five Poems—a collection of poems that were first published in Poetry in September, 1947—commenting on theme and execution.

The central concern of all the poems of this group [Five Poems] by Miss Avison is the order by which men live. Very markedly this is a poetry of ideas. Explicit argument and exposition are prominent in much of it, particularly in passages dealing with the use of certain constructs of our vision and with the means by which new ones are created.

In two of the poems, "Perspective" and "Geometaphysics," Miss Avison examines some current constructs. In the former, she rejects the illusion of perspective because it "cripples space" by defining it in a "small tapering design / That brings up punkt." She prefers...