About a week ago I bought a used copy of Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems.  Of course, I've known about Stevens for decades and I have an old paperback of The Palm at the End of the Mind that I'd never opened.  The Collected Poems was a Library of America edition and I couldn't resist getting it due my bibliophilic tendencies.  And I started reading it almost immediately.

But a funny thing happened as I got deeper and deeper into Collected Poems.  I enjoyed a few of the early poems in Harmonium, his first book of poems, but the more I read, the more baffled I became.  It wasn't just the obscurity of his poems.  I happen to like obscure poetry.  But the further I got, the more impatient I became with Stevens' writing.  I even bought a Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens, hoping that having a gloss available would ameliorate my understanding (it just made things worse).  I got as far as Transport to Summer (1947), which is a little more than halfway through Collected Poems, when I decided something was very wrong.  I was starting to positively despise his poems.  I felt like I'd been tricked, I really felt like Stevens was some kind of massive hoax on the world of poetry.

I decided to do some research.  Because I revere Ezra Pound, I decided to see if I could find out what Pound thought about Stevens.  I started Googling.  This is the first thing I came across:

"Are you Team Pound or Team Stevens? It’s a question that readers of modern poetry often end up asking themselves. All would agree that both Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens are important to the history of modern poetry; that, without The Cantos and “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” without “In a Station of the Metro” and “The Plain Sense of Things,” modern poetry would be a fundamentally different thing. But agreeing on a poet’s importance doesn’t mean agreeing on a poet’s value, and, as Marjorie Perloff and other critics have noted, lovers of Pound tend not to be lovers of Stevens and vice versa.

Moreover, choosing sides here seems to express something more than mere personal preference. Do you believe that poetry is about subjectivity and the imagination? That it speaks not so much to the world as to “the delicatest ear of the mind,” as Stevens put it? That, in other words, poetry is the self speaking to the self about the self? Then you’re probably on Team Stevens, along with Helen Vendler, Harold Bloom, and others. Or do you believe that poetry is about hard surfaces and sharp angles, about particulars rather than essences or types? And that it should—indeed, must—include not just the self but also history and politics and economics? Then you’re probably on Team Pound—and a venerable team it is, counting Hugh Kenner and Donald Davie among its members. To love both Pound and Stevens is akin to loving both the Yankees and the Red Sox: it’s possible, but not particularly likely."

from "An Heir to Both Stevens and Pound" by Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine, Oct. 20, 2015

This gave me my basic answer, but I wanted to know more, so I Googled Marjorie Perloff and was lucky enough to find her article "Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?", which somone had kindly downloaded and posted on a blog.  It can be found here:

https://blogs.princeton.edu/poeticsofhis...468795.pdf

It's a very good explanation of the Pound vs. Stevens divide, if anybody is interested.  I was, so I read it through.

I'm going to keep reading Stevens.  I don't think I'm going to change my mind about him, but I will try to give him a sympathetic reading and enjoy the poems as much as I can.  At the end of the exercise, I can at least say I've read him, but he's not my cup of tea.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OL...Yw9NkR6HdU


Listen, and write poems based on listening.

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I have a few Ezra Pound books, I don't read them. I don't read Jack Kerouac. I admire their lives, even their bigotry. That made them who they are, and they never killed anyone, directly.
I've never killed anyone directly.


Wallace Stevens will last. Pound won't. Because Pound is dry in the way Stevens is flavor.

That's it.


There's nothing else to say about it. Ezra Pound has his place and his things to play with.

Wallace Stevens is poetry of the 20th century.


Now, we know that dates and times are all collective assets.

We are worse than bigots. We are . . .


Well, there has to be differences between this and that for poetry to have an effect/affect.


There has to be determined things.


Wallace Stevens is the poetry of the play of determined things read The Rock.

I've yet to read much of either, but as someone who's no member of some master race, I'd have to default to the one who isn't an unapologetic fascist.

(08-31-2023, 12:42 PM)rowens Wrote:  Wallace Stevens will last. Pound won't. 

If I were younger, I would lay a bet with you about this.  All I can say is Pound will last for me.

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(08-31-2023, 04:33 PM)RiverNotch Wrote:  I've yet to read much of either, but as someone who's no member of some master race, I'd have to default to the one who isn't an unapologetic fascist.

Understood.  I guess I'd just say he was an honest fascist.

Pound was on the barricades all his life.  Stevens spent his life at Hartford Insurance. 

Going after either man for anything but the quality of his poetry is irrelevant to me.

This is the poem I used of Ezra Pound. This is one of the only particular uses I've had for him, directly.


When I but think upon the great dead days
And turn my mind upon that splendid madness,
Lo! I do curse my strength
And blame the sun his gladness;
For that the one is dead
And the red sun mocks my sadness.

Behold me, Vidal, that was fool of fools!
Swift as the king wolf was I and as strong
When tall stags fled me through the alder brakes,
And every jongleur knew me in his song,
And the hounds fled and the deer fled
And none fled over long.

Even the grey pack knew me and knew fear.
God! how the swiftest hind's blood spurted hot
Over the sharpened teeth and purpling lips!
Hot was that hind's blood yet it scorched me not
As did first scorn, then lips of the Penautier!
Aye ye are fools, if ye think time can blot

From Piere Vidal’s remembrance that blue night.
God! but the purple of the sky was deep!
Clear, deep, translucent, so the stars me seemed
Set deep in crystal; and because my sleep
Rare visitor came not, the Saints I guerdon
For that restlessness Piere set to keep

One more fool's vigil with the hollyhocks.
Swift came the Loba, as a branch that's caught,
Torn, green and silent in the swollen Rhone,
Green was her mantle, close, and wrought
Of some thin silk stuff that's scarce stuff at all,
But like a mist wherethrough her white form fought,

And conquered! Ah God! conquered!
Silent my mate came as the night was still.
Speech? Words? Faugh! Who talks of words and love?!
Hot is such love and silent,
Silent as fate is, and as strong until
It faints in taking and in giving all.

Stark, keen, triumphant, till it plays at death.
God! she was white then, splendid as some tomb
High wrought of marble, and the panting breath
Ceased utterly. Well, then I waited, drew,
Half-sheathed, then naked from its saffron sheath
Drew full this dagger that doth tremble here.

Just then she woke and mocked the less keen blade.
Ah God, the Loba! and my only mate!
Was there such flesh made ever and unmade!
God curse the years that turn such women grey!
Behold here Vidal, that was hunted, flayed,
Shamed and yet bowed not and that won at last.

And yet I curse the sun for his red gladness,
I that have known strath, garth, brake, dale,
And every run-away of the wood through that great
madness,
Behold me shrivelled as an old oak's trunk
And made men's mock'ry in my rotten sadness!

No man hath heard the glory of my days:
No man hath dared and won his dare as I:
One night, one body and one welding flame!
What do ye own, ye niggards! that can buy
Such glory of the earth? Or who will win
Such battle-guerdon with his 'prowesse high' ?

O age gone lax! O stunted followers,
That mask at passions and desire desires,
Behold me shrivelled, and your mock of mocks;
And yet I mock you by the mighty fires
That burnt me to this ash.

Ah! Cabaret! Ah Cabaret, thy hills again!

Take your hands off me! . . . [Sniffing the air.
Ha! this scent is hot!

Ezra Pound

> Understood. I guess I'd just say he was an honest fascist.

For all I know, Mein Kampf could be a literary treasure xP

(08-31-2023, 07:46 PM)TranquillityBase Wrote:  Going after either man for anything but the quality of his poetry is irrelevant to me.

What makes you think that his views had no influence on his writing?

tbf I think it's rather ymmv. I'm comfortable listening to/reading the libretti of Wagner still, but I see Eliot (whom I've read a lot more than Pound) as a nasty, nasty ghost to be exorcised. Then again, there's a big difference with the way only nutters nowadays don't have some reservations with Wagner and his antisemitism, and with the way Pound's politics continue to be casually dismissed, or even suppressed, especially considering that much of the suppression of knowledge of his politics during his lifetime was essentially the same movement as resistance to, say, desegregation. Reading the essay you linked, with the perspectives around and of Pound and Stevens being described: where Stevens eschews politics entirely, Pound effectively claims it to be central -- and what exactly was Pound's politics, if not to see as inferior myself (a Filipino), or to demonize the likes of Harold Bloom (a Jew)? The question in the essay is framed as that between Pound's Modernism and Stevens's evolved Romanticism, to which I'd ask: why assign the age to the auspices of either of those writers, anyway? is the 20th century to be the age of Mussolini or Roosevelt?

Also not sure how honest Pound was when he essentially faked insanity to avoid treason trials xD

https://www.thenation.com/article/archiv...ics/tnamp/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23105029

For no reason, I want to post videos about the death of Philip Roth. The full thing I saw the day after he died has been cut.

But,

these two videos give the interview with him, and the second video cuts about 6 minutes.












Harold Bloom loved Philip Roth. He despised Celine and Pound, and didn't so much despise, but resented Henry Miller and Kurt Vonnegut, their close ties with Celine.


I like the second video here. That lines up with my views about comedy.


And we do what we do. We may fail. And that makes us angry and aggressive. 



Society, in the "Western Areas", puts so much emphasis on how much more powerful words are over sticks and stones. 
We have a Literature in America, because we don't have to worry so much about sticks and stones.

Ezra Pound got into the sticks and stones. 



Harold Bloom was a fat, weak Jew, who was haunted by God and didn't want to believe in Him.


Jews are, stereotypically, very hifalutin arrogant people. You'd think they were Christians.


Ezra Pound.

(09-01-2023, 07:44 AM)RiverNotch Wrote:  tbf I think it's rather ymmv. I'm comfortable listening to/reading the libretti of Wagner still, but I see Eliot (whom I've read a lot more than Pound) as a nasty, nasty ghost to be exorcised. Then again, there's a big difference with the way only nutters nowadays don't have some reservations with Wagner and his antisemitism, and with the way Pound's politics continue to be casually dismissed, or even suppressed, especially considering that much of the suppression of knowledge of his politics during his lifetime was essentially the same movement as resistance to, say, desegregation. Reading the essay you linked, with the perspectives around and of Pound and Stevens being described: where Stevens eschews politics entirely, Pound effectively claims it to be central -- and what exactly was Pound's politics, if not to see as inferior myself (a Filipino), or to demonize the likes of Harold Bloom (a Jew)? The question in the essay is framed as that between Pound's Modernism and Stevens's evolved Romanticism, to which I'd ask: why assign the age to the auspices of either of those writers, anyway? is the 20th century to be the age of Mussolini or Roosevelt?

Also not sure how honest Pound was when he essentially faked insanity to avoid treason trials xD

https://www.thenation.com/article/archiv...ics/tnamp/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23105029

At the heart of all this is the bigger question of whether artists, as a class, should be the untermensch
Throughout history, artists have been a sort of slave class, turning out an ode here in praise of the sovran, painting a teenage nude there for a lecherous, syphilitic old noble oozing pus and slime. The true genii, such as Leonardo, rightly held their engineering above their art, and indeed, used the latter as an instrument of the former.
Plato wouldn't have any poetry. Nor would he admit any into his akademi who did not know geometry.
The prophet of Islam wouldn't have any either.

Because art acts upon the emotions, much as a prostitute acts upon the limbic system. It is the opposite of knowledge, of what makes us different from a paramecium.
In modern history, all degenerates have been artists and poets. The great emancipators and problem solvers have been scientists (lest one points out the example of Josef Mengele, he earned his PhD in anthropology, at a time when medicine had no maths in it), lawyers, or businesspersons.

Pound was a special case amongst the untermensch
I am automatically suspicious of any Anglophone celebrity since Shakespeare. Living in the Anglosphere, their talents are magnified out of proportion. There was a time not so long ago when Bobby Moore was a star. Now look at Mbappe.
Specifically, Pound was famous because he came from a distinguished American family, landed in Fitzrovia, and mixed with the cream of literary society at a time when being American was both exotic and comfortable for the Brits, like a racially acceptable orangoutan in monkey society. That's why America seeps into so much of PG Wodehouse. That was before Chic-fil-A was a thing. It was his proximity to a small handful of eminences of the time that sealed his fame.

Nothing he ever wrote made any sense.
At least, Hopkins was a genuine striver for the truth in all things. Pound was a hack. Like Emily Dickinson, his fame is entirely undeserved, and people read him today because they think there's something profound in his gibberish. Like with Conrad.

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Note that I don't think prose writers are artists. Prose is prose, as it should be.

(09-01-2023, 06:13 AM)RiverNotch Wrote:  > Understood.  I guess I'd just say he was an honest fascist.

For all I know, Mein Kampf could be a literary treasure xP

I'm aware you're being facetious, but if you're ever curious to find out the answer to your suggestion here, that is, where Mein Kampf stands as a piece of literary work, Ron Rosenbaum wrote an excellent piece about its literary merits (or lack thereof).  I thought it was in his book Explaining Hitler, but I'm not finding it there.  So it must have been published separately.  I can't find it right this moment or I'd send a link.

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(09-01-2023, 06:56 AM)O. M. Geezersnaps Wrote:  

(08-31-2023, 07:46 PM)TranquillityBase Wrote:  Going after either man for anything but the quality of his poetry is irrelevant to me.

What makes you think that his views had no influence on his writing?

His views most certainly had an influence on his Cantos, but his views were not strictly fascist from the beginning.  I'd have to do more research to pinpoint exactly when he crossed that borderline.  Two of the 120 Cantos written at the height of his fascist phase were "suppressed" although I think they may have been reinserted in newer editions.  Or maybe not.  They were written entirely in Italian.

His authoritarianism comes out much more noticeably in his prose writings.  When I recently (recently being about 10 years ago) tried to reread "Guide to Kulchur", it hit me like a ton of bricks.  But I've read the Cantos at least twice and, at least for me, I never detected the stench of fascism.  And I've been a student of fascism since I was about 13.  Again, excepting those two wartime Cantos which I can't read because I've not seen an English translation of them.

All I can do is refer you to the Pisan Cantos.  He may have not apologized, but he certainly records the reckoning that he faced at that point in his life.

Anyway, what I really found interesting is the fact that there are two such divergent streams of poetry that were being written contemporaneously and how i stumbled upon that divergence in my reading of Wallace Stevens.  That was the point I was trying to make.

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(09-01-2023, 07:44 AM)RiverNotch Wrote:  tbf I think it's rather ymmv. I'm comfortable listening to/reading the libretti of Wagner still, but I see Eliot (whom I've read a lot more than Pound) as a nasty, nasty ghost to be exorcised. Then again, there's a big difference with the way only nutters nowadays don't have some reservations with Wagner and his antisemitism, and with the way Pound's politics continue to be casually dismissed, or even suppressed, especially considering that much of the suppression of knowledge of his politics during his lifetime was essentially the same movement as resistance to, say, desegregation. Reading the essay you linked, with the perspectives around and of Pound and Stevens being described: where Stevens eschews politics entirely, Pound effectively claims it to be central -- and what exactly was Pound's politics, if not to see as inferior myself (a Filipino), or to demonize the likes of Harold Bloom (a Jew)? The question in the essay is framed as that between Pound's Modernism and Stevens's evolved Romanticism, to which I'd ask: why assign the age to the auspices of either of those writers, anyway? is the 20th century to be the age of Mussolini or Roosevelt?

Also not sure how honest Pound was when he essentially faked insanity to avoid treason trials xD

https://www.thenation.com/article/archiv...ics/tnamp/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23105029

I think what Pound embraced was not politics, but economics, and he embraced some wild theories that perhaps he saw being implemented in some way in Mussolini's Italy.  But I really don't know without doing more research.  I know there's very little politics in the Cantos, except the politics of Renaissance Italy.

I just ordered the Daniel Swift book and will read it.

As I said to OMG, what I was trying to relay was how I fell into what now feels like a trap in my reading of Wallace Stevens and my reaction to it.  I find his poetry unreadable (in spite of which I will keep reading him because there must be something important I'm missing); I find Pound readable, fascinating (uh-oh....fasci....), educational and inspiring.  Maybe I'm a crypto-fascist after all.  But reading Pound did not lead me to become a neo-Nazi.

Somehow I can't see the Proud Boys sitting around and discussing Pound, but maybe they do.

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(09-01-2023, 09:51 AM)busker Wrote:  Pound was a hack. Like Emily Dickinson, his fame is entirely undeserved, and people read him today because they think there's something profound in his gibberish. Like with Conrad.

Ouch! Another two of my favorites bite the dust.

This has been a enlightening exchange.  

What about James Joyce?  Also gibberish?  Just curious.

(09-01-2023, 07:22 PM)TranquillityBase Wrote:  

(09-01-2023, 06:13 AM)RiverNotch Wrote:  > Understood.  I guess I'd just say he was an honest fascist.

For all I know, Mein Kampf could be a literary treasure xP

I'm aware you're being facetious, but if you're ever curious to find out the answer to your suggestion here, that is, where Mein Kampf stands as a piece of literary work, Ron Rosenbaum wrote an excellent piece about its literary merits (or lack thereof).  I thought it was in his book Explaining Hitler, but I'm not finding it there.  So it must have been published separately.  I can't find it right this moment or I'd send a link.

---

(09-01-2023, 06:56 AM)O. M. Geezersnaps Wrote:  

(08-31-2023, 07:46 PM)TranquillityBase Wrote:  Going after either man for anything but the quality of his poetry is irrelevant to me.

What makes you think that his views had no influence on his writing?

His views most certainly had an influence on his Cantos, but his views were not strictly fascist from the beginning.  I'd have to do more research to pinpoint exactly when he crossed that borderline.  Two of the 120 Cantos written at the height of his fascist phase were "suppressed" although I think they may have been reinserted in newer editions.  Or maybe not.  They were written entirely in Italian.

His authoritarianism comes out much more noticeably in his prose writings.  When I recently (recently being about 10 years ago) tried to reread "Guide to Kulchur", it hit me like a ton of bricks.  But I've read the Cantos at least twice and, at least for me, I never detected the stench of fascism.  And I've been a student of fascism since I was about 13.  Again, excepting those two wartime Cantos which I can't read because I've not seen an English translation of them.

All I can do is refer you to the Pisan Cantos.  He may have not apologized, but he certainly records the reckoning that he faced at that point in his life.

Anyway, what I really found interesting is the fact that there are two such divergent streams of poetry that were being written contemporaneously and how i stumbled upon that divergence in my reading of Wallace Stevens.  That was the point I was trying to make.

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(09-01-2023, 07:44 AM)RiverNotch Wrote:  tbf I think it's rather ymmv. I'm comfortable listening to/reading the libretti of Wagner still, but I see Eliot (whom I've read a lot more than Pound) as a nasty, nasty ghost to be exorcised. Then again, there's a big difference with the way only nutters nowadays don't have some reservations with Wagner and his antisemitism, and with the way Pound's politics continue to be casually dismissed, or even suppressed, especially considering that much of the suppression of knowledge of his politics during his lifetime was essentially the same movement as resistance to, say, desegregation. Reading the essay you linked, with the perspectives around and of Pound and Stevens being described: where Stevens eschews politics entirely, Pound effectively claims it to be central -- and what exactly was Pound's politics, if not to see as inferior myself (a Filipino), or to demonize the likes of Harold Bloom (a Jew)? The question in the essay is framed as that between Pound's Modernism and Stevens's evolved Romanticism, to which I'd ask: why assign the age to the auspices of either of those writers, anyway? is the 20th century to be the age of Mussolini or Roosevelt?

Also not sure how honest Pound was when he essentially faked insanity to avoid treason trials xD

https://www.thenation.com/article/archiv...ics/tnamp/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23105029

I think what Pound embraced was not politics, but economics, and he embraced some wild theories that perhaps he saw being implemented in some way in Mussolini's Italy.  But I really don't know without doing more research.  I know there's very little politics in the Cantos, except the politics of Renaissance Italy.

I just ordered the Daniel Swift book and will read it.

As I said to OMG, what I was trying to relay was how I fell into what now feels like a trap in my reading of Wallace Stevens and my reaction to it.  I find his poetry unreadable (in spite of which I will keep reading him because there must be something important I'm missing); I find Pound readable, fascinating (uh-oh....fasci....), educational and inspiring.  Maybe I'm a crypto-fascist after all.  But reading Pound did not lead me to become a neo-Nazi.

Somehow I can't see the Proud Boys sitting around and discussing Pound, but maybe they do.

---

(09-01-2023, 09:51 AM)busker Wrote:  Pound was a hack. Like Emily Dickinson, his fame is entirely undeserved, and people read him today because they think there's something profound in his gibberish. Like with Conrad.

Ouch! Another two of my favorites bite the dust.

This has been a enlightening exchange.  

What about James Joyce?  Also gibberish?  Just curious.

I was being dramatic for effect, but really, I don’t subscribe to the art for art’s sake view.
If all were after is sensory stimulation, then LSD does it better, I’m sure
And technique does just that

Great art has to be something more, and a great artist has to be above all, empathetic.
Conrad is anything but. Chinua Achebe’s brilliant essay on Conrad shows why.
Kipling wasn’t empathetic, but he’s seen as a technically skilled little racist today 

Orwell was, and he was also a genius

Dostoevsky was, to the highest degree

Wagner wasn’t, but he didn’t write Madame Butterfly type operas either

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

Why do you, TB, understand Dylan Thomas, and not Wallace Stevens?

(09-03-2023, 08:10 AM)rowens Wrote:  Why do you, TB, understand Dylan Thomas, and not Wallace Stevens?

The best I can figure is it's a matter of language and subject matter.

Dylan Thomas is all about solid Anglo-Saxon source words.  Stevens tends towards words derived from Latin.
Thomas writes about reality as I perceive it.  Stevens is all abstraction/philosophy of perception/idea vs reality (as far as I can understand it).

I got as far as Auroras of Autumn.  I know you recommended The Rock, so once I've had a break, I'll go back and read that.  

Right now I just need some distance.  Probably I tried to read too much too fast.

Thanks for asking.

TqB

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(09-01-2023, 08:08 AM)rowens Wrote:  Harold Bloom loved Philip Roth. He despised Celine and Pound, and didn't so much despise, but resented Henry Miller and Kurt Vonnegut, their close ties with Celine.

The more I read about Harold Bloom, the less I trust his judgement.

(09-03-2023, 06:19 PM)TranquillityBase Wrote:  Right now I just need some distance.  Probably I tried to read too much too fast.

If there's an author that I completely hate, or even just a piece that I don't like, I force myself to write it out by hand (at least a portion, if it's long). Slowing down with it shows me elements of craft that I had missed. It never makes me suddenly fall in love with an author, but I'll understand why this person gets respect in some quarters. It's what I have to do with Pound.

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.

When I started reading poetry, there were three series of literary criticism books. The main one about Wallace Stevens was written by Marjorie Perloff.

I found a copy of that last year at a used bookstore. It cost 50 cents.


Here's her doing a "recent" lecture on Wallace Stevens at Yale:






That Hammer guy is also quite good with Merrill and Crane. James and Hart, that is.

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Lucy Beckett was on the Second Series. And she is pretty good, too.


And Harold Bloom wrote a book in the 1970s that I stole from the library. I stole it because it was blue. And that gives you a huge course on the poetry of Harold Bloom.

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Actually, there is no divide. Romantic Agon thrives on the dynamic.

That's why I'm not gay. The male/female dynamic is so genius, with a lowercase G.

Thanks for the video.  Very helpful.

The dark of Winter, when the stars, ironically, seem brightest. The wideness of Summer, the heat like chemtrails in a movie called The Crazies, from the '70s to the '00s. Spring and Autumn, the same-length but shorter blending months, early autumn, early spring are even more between. Between what? My dreams are different, sunlight, sounds. Lots of things.
  Then you get in a state beyond You, and start talking. That is Imagination speaking. The images are silently alive. And there's an expression of Nostalgia. Not nostalgia for any specific thing. Very Nostalgia. The Thing In Itself.
  How to express something Universally? Like the Baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like the famous statue of Baphomet sitting on top of the Earth. Universal means Earth, means solar system, means galaxy, means universe, means mind, means world.
  The very Nostalgia. The very Imagination.
  The Things of Summer/August. The minute particulars. The Difference. What makes the Universal expressible in words and experiences.