[The Cost of Seriousness] is important in what it attempts, and important for Porter, I should imagine—not just because of the more intimate and painful area of experience on which many poems draw, but because he has cut out so much of the clutter of cleverness which lumbered previous volumes.

The cost of seriousness is not, as Porter writes in his title poem, 'death', but emotional pain; and the pain in these poems extends beyond the poems directly mourning his wife, and reaches into the process of making art. Porter feels with force 'The Lying Art':

                        … Real pain
       it aims for, but can only make gestures,
       the waste of selling-short, the 'glittering'….

Art cannot reach the reality of pain. What does this leave Porter with, as artist? A combination of indirectness and statement: poems formally set, often offering open discourse or arguments with himself, which employ intimacies...