About this poem:

The term aesthetic arrest was first used by James Joyce in his book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The philosopher, historian and theologian Joseph Campbell, also a Joyce scholar, explained aesthetic arrest as,"A simple beholding of the object... you experience a radiance. You are held in aesthetic arrest. This radiance, the perception of beauty, is regarded as a communication of the hidden power behind the world, shining through some physical form."