Her early pieces have a literalness that she later discarded in favour of a more open-ended sense of evocation. |
It's literalness is so easily consumed that there is no choice but for the work to be ephemeral and meaningless. |
But it should only be attempted if the critic first honors the poem's literalness, because the poem's cold power is in its literalness. |
The drawings have a Photo-Realist literalness, and a dense, satiny gloss accenting edges and shadows in a masterful counterpoint of tonal values. |
Herbert takes the incarnation with absolute literalness, often simply identifying the incarnate Christ with God. |
Her comments in interviews and at readings, likewise, reveal the startling literalness of her apparently abstract, difficult poems. |