AustLit

'Buhagiar Poem 72 ("What Gems Chill Glitter Yon") of Christopher Brennan's magnum opus Poems 1913, a livre compose of 105 individual poems, has drawn especially virulent responses from certain critics of his alleged impenetrability. Brennan's poetry admittedly can be challenging in the extreme. This can be due, in the cases of some poems, to his adherence to the Symboliste principle that the reader should receive no help at all from content adjunct to the bare images and symbols themselves. Here, Buhagiar intends to use the symbols, correctly interpreted, of poem 72 as keys to unlocking its mystery and to show that the poem is a powerful instance of a momentous theme of Poems 1913, the clear appreciation of which can help elucidate the larger work.' (Publication abstract)