Poetry as conduit …

… Freshness of Words – George Herbert and Anna Akhmatova | Martyn Crucefix. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Drury suggests that Herbert’s evident love of language is more apparent than real because of his ceaseless drive towards a linguistic simplicity (just the kind of simplicity of expression that Akhmatova sought and is praised for). Herbert wanted words to correspond to the truths of experience – an idea that has got very obscured in our post-modern age, but one that most poets still doggedly adhere to.