09-04-2023, 01:49 AM
I woke up and read this thread, then went back to sleep and had a lucid dream where I was told what to say about Wallace Stevens, but I forgot most of it.
I have the Complete Works. The Blue Guitar book, I usually skip. I don't order my poets by Movements or Time Periods or Alphabetically, I have a notebook with a table of correspondences. They intersect in strange ways. The Table is like a Table of Chemical Elements. William Blake is placed above Wallace Stevens due to their differing but similar views of Imagination. And next to Stevens, on the right, is James Merrill.
Harold Bloom is useful with these kinds of things. He has a System, and a Code. I don't care for Systems, but I admire a Code. Since he couldn't write poetry himself, he made a prose mythos in in the form of literary criticism. When you are working with Theory in Arts and Philosophy and Religion, you have to pick the Materials you work with. Slavoj Zizek made his Work out of Hegel, Marx and Lacan. Harold Bloom bases his whole Framework on Blake, Freud and Emerson. Freud disallowed him Swerving into Mysticism, as these days, it's usually Blake and Jung that are paired. So, Bloom is a nonbelieving Jewish Humanist. As such, he'll allow his fair share of bigotry, but draws the line with anything that reminds him of Celine, which is a great portion of late 20th century poetry and prose. He does read Pound though, to attack him, as he does T. S. Eliot.
Wallace Stevens is Romantic in the same way Hart Crane is. Though, most won't claim that he is, or that Hart Crane is much of a poet. Wallace Stevens denies all influence.
I have two poems from years ago around here that echo The Snowman, though I wasn't aware at the time of writing.
I often listen to poetry being read or lectured on, and the more I drink, the more I go off in my own thoughts, and hear the poetry subliminally. I pick up cadences, rhythms, corresponding symbols. I also feel auras about certain poets. Blue is a color I feel about Stevens. Whenever I'm writing and I have that blue feeling, I know that I'm channeling some Wallace Stevens. I also read his books by season. I enjoy merging him and Robert Frost in mid Winter. Lots of poems of cold wind and solitude. There are poems for thawing and flowers of spring and the birds passing through. I live right between Stevens' New England and Florida. I measure place by Bishop and time by Warren. I go into the woods with Dickey. I walk the cities with Poe. I go to Universities and Libraries with Lovecraft, visit graveyards with Nerval, talk in a drunken dialect with Faulkner, wax poetic with a suave Romantic simplicity with Hemingway. I invoke them as I do gods and angels, or I evoke them and wrestle with them like I do demons or djinn. Stevens exists in a hazy blue Realm that I cross through often from poetic Realm to Realm. Finding the right Key to save me from Confessionalism and Obscurantism.
I have the Complete Works. The Blue Guitar book, I usually skip. I don't order my poets by Movements or Time Periods or Alphabetically, I have a notebook with a table of correspondences. They intersect in strange ways. The Table is like a Table of Chemical Elements. William Blake is placed above Wallace Stevens due to their differing but similar views of Imagination. And next to Stevens, on the right, is James Merrill.
Harold Bloom is useful with these kinds of things. He has a System, and a Code. I don't care for Systems, but I admire a Code. Since he couldn't write poetry himself, he made a prose mythos in in the form of literary criticism. When you are working with Theory in Arts and Philosophy and Religion, you have to pick the Materials you work with. Slavoj Zizek made his Work out of Hegel, Marx and Lacan. Harold Bloom bases his whole Framework on Blake, Freud and Emerson. Freud disallowed him Swerving into Mysticism, as these days, it's usually Blake and Jung that are paired. So, Bloom is a nonbelieving Jewish Humanist. As such, he'll allow his fair share of bigotry, but draws the line with anything that reminds him of Celine, which is a great portion of late 20th century poetry and prose. He does read Pound though, to attack him, as he does T. S. Eliot.
Wallace Stevens is Romantic in the same way Hart Crane is. Though, most won't claim that he is, or that Hart Crane is much of a poet. Wallace Stevens denies all influence.
I have two poems from years ago around here that echo The Snowman, though I wasn't aware at the time of writing.
I often listen to poetry being read or lectured on, and the more I drink, the more I go off in my own thoughts, and hear the poetry subliminally. I pick up cadences, rhythms, corresponding symbols. I also feel auras about certain poets. Blue is a color I feel about Stevens. Whenever I'm writing and I have that blue feeling, I know that I'm channeling some Wallace Stevens. I also read his books by season. I enjoy merging him and Robert Frost in mid Winter. Lots of poems of cold wind and solitude. There are poems for thawing and flowers of spring and the birds passing through. I live right between Stevens' New England and Florida. I measure place by Bishop and time by Warren. I go into the woods with Dickey. I walk the cities with Poe. I go to Universities and Libraries with Lovecraft, visit graveyards with Nerval, talk in a drunken dialect with Faulkner, wax poetic with a suave Romantic simplicity with Hemingway. I invoke them as I do gods and angels, or I evoke them and wrestle with them like I do demons or djinn. Stevens exists in a hazy blue Realm that I cross through often from poetic Realm to Realm. Finding the right Key to save me from Confessionalism and Obscurantism.