Stephen Romer's essays range from the key figures of French and English Modernism to the contemporary practice of poetry, and its translation. At the heart of Chaos and the Clean Line is an enquiry into the talismanic power that a source of order can possess for the poet who lives in a disordered world. It is what drives Mallarm 's 'fury against the formless'. Sometimes it may be found in a longed-for sense of psychological detachment, as when...