One of the problems for a poet living in a culture with a well-developed technology is that the history of technology is one of perpetual revolution, whereas genuine revolutions in the history of art (or society) are few and far between. He is tempted to imagine that, unless he produces something completely novel, he will be unoriginal. The reading public, too, James (Arlington) Wright 1927–1980 © Thomas Victor 1984may be similarly misled and attach undue importance to the individual differences between one poet and another, which, of course, exist and matter, ignoring that which is characteristic of them all, though this may really be of greater interest.

For example, Mr. Wright uses as an epigraph to [The Green Wall] the well-known medieval carol "Adam Lay Ibounden." It is as impossible to imagine a poet of the twentieth-century writing this as to imagine a fifteenth-century poet writing … lines by Mr. Wright...