Continuing our series of forgotten masterpieces with another Parisian expatriate, Evan Shipman was a poet I had only recently gotten down to reading. I was not disappointed. Having only read a handful of his poems, I’m convinced Shipman is a worthwhile endeavor to any lovers of modernist poetry. Unlike Cheever Dunning, Shipman very much embraced the tenets of vers libre, composing succinct verses with a rhythm that resembles the early lyrics of T.S. Eliot, those “Portraits”, “Prufrocks”, and “Rhapsodies”. “Untitled” takes a stroll on a street ravaged by time, a harrowing journey that sees Shipman embody a stone cold, time-transcendent narrator, Virgil guiding Dante’s descent. All of this being said, it is truly a forgotten masterpiece, one very much worth the read.
Untitled Poem | Evan Shipman
