Quill, Solitary Apparition

Author: Barbara Guest

Publisher: The Post-Apollo Press (1996)

Of Quill, Solitary Apparition, Barbara Guest has said: “This poem was one of the most difficult poems I’ve ever written, because I was venturing into another territory, and also emotionally it’s in a different territory. And it was very stringent. I was able to say exactly what I wanted to say, but I was confined.” Guest considered Quill one of her most important works, professing that “even in a loose-limbed vertical structure risk is encountered; to concentrate on that risk where the image recedes, lugging its solitary and watered shadow…” Brain Teare asserts that in Quill, “her trademark Mallarmean late style emerges, austere, witty, and rife with intimations of mysticism.” In these open, abstract lyrics, we witness a preeminent poet of the New York School writing at the height of her powers.