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"The test for allusion is that it is a phenomenum that some reader or readers may fail to observe" [12, p.39] Allusions are far from being the sole preserve of literature. Cinema, painting and music frequently contain quotations from other works. Early still-lifes in particular depended on a rich vocabulary of symbols which many admirers are unaware of today. But how important for the contemporary reader is the awareness of a poem's allusions? And how has this importance changed? The Mechanics of Allusion According to Ben-Porot [5, p.109] the process of a reader's actualisation of an allusion involves recognition of marker identification of evoked text modification of the initial local interpretation of passage activation of evoked text Full actualisation may be frustrated at each stage - recognition of marker If an allusion is disguised or unobtrusive (it doesn't appear in quotes, it has a tempting non-allusive interpretation, etc) the reader may not realise...

The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception, because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. - Shklovsky, "Art as Technique", 1917. Why are some poems 'difficult'? There are many reasons, lack of control or concern by the writer amongst them. Here I'd like to concentrate on some of the more legitimate reasons for obscurity, borrowing some ideas from maths and the visual arts. Though poetry may aspire to music, it shares many inherent problems with painting. The discovery of perspective in the middle ages provided a rigorous method of transforming 3 dimensions into 2. We have little difficulty in restoring the lost dimension ourselves. In poetry the loss is more extreme and the restoration more problematic. A poem is, after all, just a long line of characters concertina'd to fit onto the page, a one dimensional thread that began ...