Utmost Art: Complexity in the Verse of George Herbert

George Herbert has always been regarded as a man of singular piety and a poet of uncommon technical ability. Until recent times, however, he was usually thought to have written prosodically ingenious but conceptually thin verse. Mary Ellen Rickey, through a close examination of Herbert’s poetry, reveals the high concentration of ideas in his verse and the richness of his imagery. Mary Ellen Rickey is an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is author of Rhyme and Meaning in Richard Crashaw.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/1049/thumbnail.jp

Rhyme and Meaning in Richard Crashaw

Richard Crashaw’s use of rhyme is one of the distinctive aspects of his poetic technique, and in the first systematic analysis of his rhyme craft, Mary Ellen Rickey concludes that he was keenly interested in rhyme as a technical device. She traces Crashaw’s development of rhyme repetitions from the simple designs of his early epigrams and secular poems to the elaborate and irregular schemes of his mature verse. Mary Ellen Rickey is an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/1050/thumbnail.jp