In Cold Hell, in Thicket (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Olson
- First Published: 1951
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Mythology or myths, Civil War, War, Gods or goddesses, Imagination, Hell, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Egypt or Egyptians, Middle age, Winter, Snow
The Poem
“In Cold Hell, in Thicket” is a sequential poem in two parts: Each part is subdivided into numbered sections that work like the movements in a musical score, each developing an aspect of the theme of the whole poem. The title of the poem is taken from images used in the Inferno, the first book of Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy (c. 1320), in which Dante describes his descent into the Christian underworld by entering a dense thicket covering the gate of hell. The “cold” hell refers to the winter day of the poem and to the snow that is falling...
[The entire page is 2005 words long]
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