The first Surrealist filmmaker. The first female French filmmaker. The first female-French-Surrealist filmmaker. Add to this the fact that "Germaine Dulac" was an ardent feminist (some say lesbian, too), and we've got quite a title. Like her Hollywood contemporary Dorothy Arzner, Dulac upheld each pa

Composed, Dreamy, Feminist, French impressionism, Pathos, Surreal

A dense reticulum of ideas, which unravels into a swarm of images and a cacophony of sounds but nevertheless maintains a fluid coherence: such is the world of Wallace Stevens, Modernist poet par excellence, a man of stoic temperament and intimidating intelligence. With a daunting arsenal of unfamilia

Composed, Contemplative, Dense, Modernist poetry, Quirky, Smart, Sophisticated

In a 1909 essay called "How to Write a Play," George Bernard Shaw argued that the great playwright must "pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant, thus changing us from bewildered spectators of a m

Composed, Dark, Irish renaissance, Lyrical, Political, Sincere

There is a particular grunt, sputter, and song in a Heaney poem: "Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River/Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver." This is another poet in love with his language -- specifically, the cadences of the Irish tongue. The sounds of clattering, bumping,

Composed, Event, Lyrical, Modernist poetry, Mythic, Sensual, Serene