[Although Elizabeth Daryush] wrote poetry that is in the mainstream of traditional English verse, she also engaged in occasional experimental writing in addition to her imitations of that forerunner of modernism Gerard Manley Hopkins. She is now credited with being one of the first poets of the twentieth century to write successful syllabic verse. She is, in fact, known today to readers of contemporary poetry chiefly for that reason…. [She] emphasizes the fact that her syllabic verse is disciplined and structurally patterned and not the "open form" used so often by today's poets, of whom she says, "Most modern poetic form, as I see it, is a kind of open prison, without the disciplines of either the cells or the workshop, or perhaps I should rather describe it as the weedy garden of instant verse!" Her best known and perhaps her loveliest syllabic poem, "Still-Life,"… presents an unforgettable...