Mr. Boulez has long made a specialty of the work, evidently drawn not only to the formal clarity of the first three movements but also to the challenge of bringing a like lucidity to the huge and unwieldy finale.
The Costa judges pronounced the book "a unique long poem of outstanding quality, condensing a lifetime of reflection and experience into a work of transporting momentum, imaginative lucidity, and consummate formal accomplishment".
Finally, one can read a large portion of Davis's work, spanning three decades and more than seven hundred pages, and a grand cumulative achievement comes into view — a body of work probably unique in American writing, in its combination of lucidity, aphoristic brevity, formal originality, sly comedy, metaphysical bleakness, philosophical pressure, and human wisdom.
The effect of this fugue of sad speech and formal meter is not Brechtian irony but Augustan lucidity: the troubles of a time made momentarily lighter by being seen clear.
** The effect of this fugue of sad speech and formal meter is not Brechtian irony but Augustan lucidity: the troubles of a time made momentarily lighter by being seen clear.
Yet Mr. Weinberger's photographs, including formal portraits and casual group pictures, neither sensationalize nor condescend; they achieve a perfect balance between sympathy and anthropological lucidity.
Lee has not given a formal interview since the mid-Sixties but her acerbic response to one journalist who sent her a letter to test her lucidity and ask for details surrounding the new novel might be telling.
Lucidity fuels excitement.
The ease, the grace, the lucidity.
There is more loft than lucidity.
