Wallace Stevens

[twelveoone]

I suppose I mean, the struggle of self, the symbolism and the fracturing and disorientation within the poem, is in fact, the poem's messsage.

I suppose my poem Alien Nation in the 2013 challenge thread is a modernist poem but if I'm honest, I prefer the post modern and maybe 1201 will forgive in saying I think many of his poems are post modern, self knowing and aware they are poems and aware of the artifice within them and the theft and borrowing of other poetry and/or prose and texts.

In fact, I think most poetry written on these threads is modernist or tries to be modernist. Most of mine is too but that is because I am lazy. Don't take that for me saying modernist poetry is lazy, of course I'm not, I'm just refering to myself being lazy. When I am not lazy, I write something like this.

It's easier to illustrate what modernist poetry isn't than is. (in my book) No doubt 1201 will turn up and put me right, since he obviously has a reservoir of knowledge and experience while I just have a puddle.

nope
think you got it right
post modern strikes me as more off putting, less serious than modern
and if I were to come across one of mine, somehow not knowing I wrote it, I would be laughing my ass off... come on...a guy winds up in hell, and discovers on that on the way down, he broke his nose.
The morale...
Learn to roll more carefully.

 

[Angeline]

nope
think you got it right
post modern strikes me as more off putting, less serious than modern
and if I were to come across one of mine, somehow not knowing I wrote it, I would be laughing my ass off... come on...a guy winds up in hell, and discovers on that on the way down, he broke his nose.
The morale...
Learn to roll more carefully.

Do you think Stevens thought of himself as post-modern? Does it matter?

 

[Angeline]

Yeats I understand, his technical competence puts him in a rarefied league, it is rather easy to see what he is doing, it is also easy to see through him. And most of the time I don't like him.
Stevens is something else.

13 ways... strikes me as bullshit, but I'm looking at it from a jaded position. It is old hat. But what was it when it was written?

Stevens I just don't understand. Frost you can never understand, but you get three quarters of the way there...and then you realize there is something more. I get that feeling with Stevens but I just can't get a toehold.

If you read through the thread you know it took me a while to get this, but finally I did. Stevens spent his days looking at actuarial tables, calculating the likelihood of death. I imagine that would make anyone pretty squirrelly eventually, but then add to it that he wrote poems and started doing so long before he met The Hartford Insurance Company. I think you end up with poems that are increasingly obsessed with measuring the world and finding order only in the certainty of death.

 

[twelveoone]

Do you think Stevens thought of himself as post-modern? Does it matter?

I think Stevens thought of himself as Stevens, quite unlike Eliot, Yeats, Pound, et al.

 

[Angeline]

I think Stevens thought of himself as Stevens, quite unlike Eliot, Yeats, Pound, et al.

Ok. Now write a poem for the contest. I know you can knock it out of the park.

Welcome back.

 

[twelveoone]

Ok. Now write a poem for the contest. I know you can knock it out of the park.

Welcome back.

I already trashed Stevens (or rather blackbirds).

 

[Angeline]

I already trashed Stevens (or rather blackbirds).

You can write an erotic poem about summer and trash someone else. I still don't agree with you about Stevens, but you can trash him again, too, if you like.

 

[twelveoone]

You can write an erotic poem about summer and trash someone else. I still don't agree with you about Stevens, but you can trash him again, too, if you like.

]
I don't disagree, upfront, I don't understand Stevens, I am missing something.

an erotic poem about summer?

Hot and sweaty
Veronica and Betty
And Reggie was aghast
at not being invited
to the vaginal repast
as if something was missing...
so Stuff it Freud

naw I think what's his name submitted something similar, but without the Freud part but had more clammy details.

 

[Angeline]

]
I don't disagree, upfront, I don't understand Stevens, I am missing something.

an erotic poem about summer?

Hot and sweaty
Veronica and Betty
And Reggie was aghast
at not being invited
to the vaginal repast
as if something was missing...
so Stuff it Freud

naw I think what's his name submitted something similar, but without the Freud part but had more clammy details.

Clammy Details is a good title for a poem.

So what is bothering you about Stevens? I know it seems dumb to ask someone what they don't understand about a poet, but give me an idea of the problem if you can. (And feel free to take your time: I have to go make potato salad. )

ETA: Can I copy your poem into the contest thread? It's so American and summery and sweaty. (The jury is still out on erotic.)

 

[twelveoone]

Clammy Details is a good title for a poem.

So what is bothering you about Stevens? I know it seems dumb to ask someone what they don't understand about a poet, but give me an idea of the problem if you can. (And feel free to take your time: I have to go make potato salad. )

ETA: Can I copy your poem into the contest thread? It's so American and summery and sweaty. (The jury is still out on erotic.)

A. yes, the best I can do, is a poem is a journey for me, with Stevens I don't know where I'm at, I want something familiar but not overly. It is strange to me.
B. no, it is crap. Is what's his name still submitting stuff that only Taz reads? I'll check back and see if any Betsey poems appear.
editted to add, he's still there

 

[twelveoone]

I'm in no position to analyze his poems, but I'm trying to learn. His poetry is typically abstract and (while I wouldn't call him exactly a philosophical poet) meditative, strongly influenced by his beliefs about perception and reality. He was also, in his later writings apparently, increasingly influenced by modernism and the abstract expressionism of artists like Picasso and Klee.

"Realism is a corruption of reality,"


"Sentimentality is a failure of feeling."

I get the feeling, I might get sentimental here, a kindred soul, in that if he was here, now over in new poems, he'd be considered a bigger prick than I am. I'm getting sentimental over YDD and Rybka; back to Wally-

The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

God, I would kill for a line like that. Sounds like as good a definition of poetry as any.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19449

back to Wally, thanks Ange, like I don't have better things to do.

well it will keep me off the threads leaving poison baits for the anon.