Categories
Follow Harriet on Twitter
About Harriet
- The Poetry Foundation's blog for poetry and related news.
- More about Harriet
- Contributors
- Archive
Blogroll
The case of the profound connection
Ange asks: “Could it be that there is a profound cultural connection between the poet and the detective?” The answer is…
Yes! Francis M. Nevins wrote on the topic for us earlier this year: Solve the Case, Solve the Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized on Monday, October 8th, 2007 by Ed Park.

Comment (1)
I can’t believe I missed this! Thanks.
“The composition of a good poem is roughly analogous to a successful feat of detection: The poet seeks a precise sequence of words that can be as agonizingly hard to discover as the truth behind appearances that is (for a Spade or Marlowe or Archer) the holy grail.”
This is a great insight, but I can’t help feeling it’s still just another analogy for detective work of a larger scope; I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s some kind of transcendence.
Someone should write a book on this.