Comment on any of the assigned poems by Wallace Stevens. How is his work different than Frost's? How do you interpret his abstract language and philosophical themes? Are there repeated preoccupations in his poems--and if so, what would you characterize as his major poetic concerns? Finally, in what way are his poems particularly "modernist"?
You can look up some additional information about Stevens on his Poets.org site.
And here's his obituary in the New York Times.
One of the most interesting differences that I have found between Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens has been their use of language. Like we discussed in class, Frost’s poems are written in the vernacular—he is a poet for the common man. Stevens, though, dollops an eyebrow raising word here and there throughout some of the poems we had to read. In “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” the word concupiscent certainly attracts the reader’s eye. Another difference is where Frost’s poetry seemed to focus on the common sights like a woodpile, a fence, or the snowy woods, Stevens’ poetry seems to have more of a fantastical feel as he uses grand titles like “emperor of ice-cream,” or explores the blackbird in different lights in ethereal language. These differences actually heighten the reading experience and highlights the writing styles of both authors.
ReplyDeleteWhitney G.
I really enjoyed reading all of the poems assigned, especially "The Snow Man." It's difficult for me to digest it beyond the idea of being able to emrace everything around you in the right state of mind. Much like one should be with a poem. Just as Stevens says in the first line of the poem "One must have a mind of winter/" one must be focused on the poetry to be able to notice the meaning beyond the surface. But, the listener in the last stanza could also be the reader of the poem, and the poem could both contain everything and nothing at the same time, much like the wintry scene in the poem.
ReplyDeleteObviously, as others have pointed out, Stevens, unlike Frost, writes in a super-cerbral idiolect. In fact, I used to read Stevens (and still do, to a lesser but necessary extent)the way academics working in the softer sciences and humanities are often accused of reading certain maser-theorists who have particularly obscure prose styles -- to absorb the syntax and exotic vocabulary rather than any meaningful content.
ReplyDeleteMost of the poems here take perception as a problem. The late Richard Rorty tried to claim Stevens as a figure of American pragmatism -- a claim I always doubted. Though the justifiably-famous line "Let be be the finale of seem" can certainly be given that kind of reading. Actually, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is one of my least favorite Stevens poems and I was going to re-print a hilariously obscene parody of it by Bill Knott (in the parody Knott irreverently plays around with the idea that Stevens had a frigid sexual relationship with his wife and likely spent alot of his time in his office masturbating -- the poem's title is modified as "The Emperor of Cum-Cream" and follows the rhythm and imagery of the original, his dick is compared to a rolled-up newspaper, etc.)but it's evidently too obscure and my hopes were dashed by the lack of Google results.
In the crucible of modernism, philosophy and poetry are melted together, and each comes to look more like the other.
I take it back, the pragmatist version of the Stevens line I mentioned before would be: "Let the finale of be be seem." He's too much of a materialist -- as seen in his often implied arguments for atheism -- to let seeming be the last word on being.
ReplyDeleteSorry if I coarsened the discussion in my previous post.
O.K. I keep coming back to this but, now that I'm thinking of the line in context, he's saying that all of life is a seeming (the life and mind of the dead lady with the horny feet) -- a thing that can't be pinned down due to experiential contingencies which bring about a kaleidoscopic explosion of perceptual modes (as w/the black bird) -- and that, in death, we achieve a pure, 'objective' being (rather like his merge with the snowman). Death, then, is the death of ever-shifting seeming and the beginning of a complete existence... One can hardly wait.
ReplyDeleteTHE TWO-ROOM THEORY
ReplyDeleteCall the masturbator,
the muscular one,
and bid him whip his big cock
till it fills our mouths
with cups and cups of cum.
Tell the whores to dress
in undress and use their clothes
to get the boys hot: our cocks
are white and dirty as
old-rolled-up newspapers
and want to spout flowers.
Let the birds and bees
final-anal my seem, sow,
sew their seed
into my slit my seam.
The only emperor is
this emptier of cumcream.
Hi hum, hic he, another
office party at Hartford Surety.
These prissdressers,
they see me as ideal: well,
I do try to please my wife,
that frigidess—I grab her knobs,
I squeezey lick those glass tits
but even the big cigar, Father
Freud, couldn't whip Kit's
ice-cold B-cups to a curdle.
Try anything, suck her toes,
kiss her feet to make her horny
and she just lies there numb on
that damn dumb sheet she
sews fannytails across but
ask her to sow her butt, to
spread her asscrack just once
she won't. She won't. Nope.
Let my lamp, my limp lump dick
affix its fucks, be its cum.
The only emperor I am
is a jack-off chump.
*
(Note: my title is taken from the fascinating depiction of the Stevens poem by Helen Vendler in her "Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire": page 50-53.)
Needless to say, this was not included by the editors in the recent anthology of poems devoted to Stevens (published last year by U of Iowa Press).
Ha! Because I'm an idler and a narcissist I was going over what I wrote on this blog before it disappears and am just now seeing Bill's post. Awesome.
ReplyDelete