Two-Part Invention

The informing spirit of Garrett's second collection is music – in the cadences of the language, the forms and resolutions of the poems. For her, a memorable poem is a kind of two-part invention, an interplay of the reader's imagination and the poet's intention. As in Bach's deceptively simple studies of that name, when the two discrete melodic lines of reader's and poet's imagination run parallel, polyphony is suggested. Elizabeth Garrett's debut volume The Rule of Three was one of the 20 'New Generation Poets' titles in 1994. A Two-Part Invention was her second collection.