« In a glass lightly »: frames of reflection from James Merrill’s Mirror and John Hollander’s Picture Window to Philip Larkin’s High Windows

John Lienhard, emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Houston, describes windows as « unobtrusive bridges to the outer world ». As bridges, windows are « the quintessential figure of the dialectic between inside and outside… a place of fracture between the familiar and the foreign », and they « belong to the public and private spheres simultaneously ». Susannah Mintz, in her essay on Donne’s A Valediction of my name in the window, defines: « The casement… as a barrier and a pa.