Transposing Meaning into Immanence: The Poetry of Francis Webb

This article will be focussing on Webb’s poetic style, and in particular on the use of words and the creation of metaphors. In the preface to his first Collected Poems, by the famous literary critic Herbert Read, we are told that “There is a remarkable coherence in this substantial body of work – published over sixteen years – a steady development of technical virtuosity and a deepening of intellectual and emotional content.”(ibid.,v) There are comparisons that are made with Rilke, (“bot not essential, for its stillness and intensity are quite unique”), for “A Death at Winson Green”, and at end of the preface this is his comment: Browning and Hopkins are perhaps obvious influences, but we need not seek further for the sources of his prosody, which is not “modern” except in its psychological and metaphysical intensity. From the Beginning Webb has been concerned with the same tragic problems as Rilke, Eliot, Pasternak, and to mention a contemporary who presents a close parallel, Robert Lowell. I cannot, after long meditation on his verse, place his achievements on a level lower than that suggested by these names.”(ibid.,ix)