Stephen Dobyns: A Sense of Space (January 2010)

Stephen Dobyns conducts close readings of the first paragraph of Henry James’ The Middle Years and William Butler Yeats’ poem “Her Praise” to examine how both writers create a sense of spaciousness in a small amount of text. Drawing on Yeats’ biography and on information about his writing process, Dobyns shows how James and Yeats use a range of craft strategies to imply the larger world.