A funny thing happened on the way to Wallace Stevens' later poetry

[RiverNotch]

Dostoevsky was also an antisemite. I'm still hopefully gonna be able to read him in his language in a few years, especially with my priest joining the chorus that recommends me to read Karamazov -- I'll probably enjoy him, too. With a lot of complicated feelings, of course, insofar as I'm under the impression his undeniable genius is still invoked by members of the Russian intelligentsia to justify their antisemitism and, by extension, that damnable war. Still, what I owe to his thought is a lot closer to me than what the world continues to exorcise from his legacy, and I imagine that's what allows me to delay Pound: what he "gives", vis-á-vis a running commentary on Renaissance Italian politics, I already get from my heavily annotated copy of the Comedia (to give an example), and as a Filipino with an interest in American politics I twice experience the worst of the worst that he brings. He's just not worth it to me, certainly not in comparison to someone as relatively harmless as Stevens.

Also I love how sharp that judgment is against Dickinson. I totally disagree, but it's the enjoyable kind of disagreement, the kind of disagreement that makes reading fun.

What opera is satisfying as poetry, anyway? I was listening to Verdi's Falstaff a while back and as much as The Merry Wives is one of Shakey's slightest plays, the interpolation of bits from the other Falstaff plays really tickled me -- that, and my limited grasp of Italian made me to imagine the gently archaic tone of the language was something to savour. The Ring is alright to read, but it's definitely better to be listened to. Other than those....I really don't know anything about opera xD