Cinematic Devices in Richard Wilbur's Poetry

Abstract

Whenever, for example, I read Paradise Lost, I, 44-58 (the long shot of Satan's fall from Heaven to Hell, the panorama of the rebels rolling in the lake of fire, the sudden close-up of Satan's afflicted eyes), I feel that I am experiencing a passage which, though its effects may have been suggested by the spatial surprises of Baroque architecture, is facilitated for me, and not misleadingly, by my familiarity with screen techniques. If this reaction is not anachronistic foolishness, it follows that one must be wary in attributing this or that aspect of any contemporary work to the influence of film.1