SOURCE: Blackmur, R. P. “Nine Poets.” Partisian Review 6, no. 2 (winter 1939): 108-9.

In the following excerpt, Blackmur discusses Riding's verbal techniques in The Collected Poems.

Nine books of contemporary verse running to over thirteen hundred pages leave one both aghast and agape. It is education by shock; the lesson, even after reflection, confusing, and the value dubious. Not for one's life would one repeat what one thought one had learned. Far better, mouth open and teeth showing, a conspirator caught, to stop at the shock. Let us see why.

Mr. Belitt says it is because you must try to integrate yourself, make of your senses a single faculty and “loose the inward wound to bleed afresh.” But his labour at integration ends, in 1938, rather more like vertigo:

Tranced as in surmise, lost between myth and mood, Derelict, decoyed, In some astonished dream of sailing. … 

Dereliction is an important element...