It may be said that Blackmur started his career in the ideological climate of the eighteenth century and ended it in that of the nineteenth. In other words, he began as a Classicist with Romantic elements in his criticism and ended as a Romanticist with Classic elements. Since Blackmur himself was not a systematic theorist it is difficult to be precise about any theory he might have had, but I believe that the poetic theory distilled from his essays on various poets illustrates the eighteenth-century Classicism in his critical thought while his essays on the critic's job and on literature and Henry Adams illustrate the progressively Romantic orientation he took as his career progressed. (p. 152)

There are … elements of Blackmur's poetic theory that are Classic—such as his emphasis on the medium of poetry. In the early stages of his career, Blackmur's emphasis on language seemed to put...