Readers of nineteenth-century poet Lionel Crambert report that he’s kind of overdoing it with how many times he says “O!” “I get that he’s trying to communicate the sublime beauty of nature, but I really don’t think he needs to be putting an ‘O!’ in here every few words,” said literary critic Ida Belsky, flipping through a book of Crambert’s collected poems that includes works such as “O Mountain!” and “O Butterfly, O!” “He seems to be advancing a nuanced understanding of humanity’s interconnectedness with the natural world, but it’s honestly hard to tell with all these ‘O!’s everywhere. Every poem looks like a piece of Swiss cheese.” At press time, Belsky was getting fed up with how many times Crambert says “lo!”

Article tools

• Print
• Email
• Tweet