While Claire is a fictional poet, the
pantoum and Victor Hugo are both real parts of literary history. Hugo is a French author who wrote poetry but is perhaps even better known for his novels, which include
Les Misérables and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although there’s ample room for doubt about whether present-day Claire is still a good poet, “On Beauty” (which gets transcribed in full here) is presumably supposed to show that Claire used to be talented—particularly since “On Beauty” is actually a poem by Zadie Smith’s husband, Nick Laird, who had already published the poem under his own name.