I was planning to post this one here, once I could set aside time to really get into this thread.

Thanks for making this, Michael. Maybe this will finally get me to really delve into Stevens. I love the glimpses I've gotten.

Walter, that's a juicy comment, and a great additional perspective. There's almost something Whitworthian about the first poem you posted -- though I'm not sure John would say he's influenced by Stevens!

Aaron, thanks. I'm learning from this, too -- as I had hoped.

Carry on...

I just had recalled to my mind that I've actually written a short piece about No Possum, No Sop, No Taters, here.

I promise to contribute with more original and responsive thoughts when I can make time.

To elucidate my previous comments: One notable aspect of Carroll’s writing is its play with the so-called arbitrary division between word and object, sign and the signified. Jabberwocky is the most well-known example of this, but we see it, too, in the following dialogue between Alice and the White Knight:

There are many more examples throughout his stories and poems. I said “so-called arbitrary division” because Carroll’s neologisms in Jabberwocky somehow convey their meaning through sound, whereas most words (like table) are arbitrary sonic demarcations of a specific concept. Carroll is able to do this partly because his nonce words are portmanteaux, so in galumphing we get a taste of gallop and triumph and that influences our conception of the word’s meaning; his ingenuity shows more in words like vorpal, which does not have the same blend of connotations, yet still produces a specific image in our mind. This breaking-down of the supposed arbitrariness between word and what the word signifies anticipates De Saussure (and later Wittgenstein) and refutes him.

Stevens uses nonsense sounds in a similar way. [Insert here an inventory of them; there are many but I am away from my books]. These sounds constitute a deconstruction of language into its most primitive and basic forms: baby babble, onomatopoeia, animal sounds. Many of Stevens’ poems deal with an enlightened solipsism (“I was the world in which I walked”), as if one’s inner world cannot be described with regular words (since their sounds convey one meaning) and can only be approximated through sounds that have no meaning, in which the connection between the word and the concept behind the word has not yet formed. “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” said the Austrian homosexual who chose to remain silent while Stevens chose to speak nonsense – both resist saying something rather than court a specific meaning that falls short of what must be expressed but, ultimately, cannot be.

Michael F,

You'll hate me, but I absolutely love The Comedian as the Letter C. I've mentioned on the Sphere several times that I think Stevens' handling of blank verse in that poem is so masterful that I can forgive whatever failings it has. He could write a thousand lines about breakfast cereal and I'd read it.

Oh well, that's my two cents about Stevens.

Just a snippet I really can't get enough of. And remember, I like this not for what it's about, but for how it sounds:

The spring came there in clinking pannicles
Of half-dissolving frost, the summer came,
If ever, whisked and wet, not ripening,
Before the winter's vacancy returned.
The myrtle, if the myrtle ever bloomed,
Was like a glacial pink upon the air.
The green palmettoes in crepuscular ice
Clipped frigidly blue-black meridians,
Morose chiaroscuro, gauntly drawn.

This is even better, more Shakesperian:

He came. The poetic hero without palms
Or jugglery, without regalia.
And as he came he saw that it was spring,
A time abhorrent to the nihilist
Or searcher for the fecund minimum.
The moonlight fiction disappeared. The spring,
Although contending featly in its veils,
Irised in dew and early fragrancies,
Was gemmy marionette to him that sought
A sinewy nakedness. A river bore
The vessel inward. Tilting up his nose,
He inhaled the rancid rosin, burly smells
Of dampened lumber, emanations blown
From warehouse doors, the gustiness of ropes,
Decays of sacks, and all the arrant stinks
That helped him round his rude aesthetic out.

Bill,

Hate you?!? Never. And certainly, never never never over differences of opinion on poetry.

I don’t claim to be ‘right’. It could well be that i) to paraphrase Scrooge, I read that poem on a day that I lunched on a bad piece of meat; or ii) I simply don’t get it; or iii) most probably, I look for poetry to do something other for me than what Stevens is doing in that poem. I sincerely respect your views and I would love to hear more from you on what you admire in his work – any of it. I'm sure I'd learn something.

In poetic amity,

M

p.s. I perceive the loveliness in the lines you quote -- specifically, the first 9. I'm less enamored of those that follow.

No, of course I was saying that with tongue in cheek. :D I know you're a class act.

And I think you're "right" insofar as you're voicing your opinion. When you say, "I really hate the taste of peas!", I know you're telling the truth, and you're as right as rain. If you were to say, "Peas taste terrible!", then you might not be as right, because many people like the taste of peas.

I admire so much in Stevens' work it'd be hard to know where to start, and impossible to know when to stop.

Michael,

What do you think of this poem?

I wrote in another thread:

Here's the B I G difference between a poet like Stevens and someone like John Ashbery. Stevens is notoriously difficult, but he doesn't write nonsense. He writes intensely philosophical poems. His work is an examination of what it is to exist, to perceive, to experience. He harps on the same themes over and over, and those themes are very active in the world today. He is wily and tricksy, but his intention is not to confuse, but to examine and contemplate.

[Funny you should mention Hollywood. Stevens would have loved The Matrix. He would have loved The Truman Show]

The typical Ashbery poem is one that appears beautiful, appears full of very important things, said in a very important manner; but ultimately he writes nonsense poems. I think he pretty much admitted to that, if I'm not mistaken? I could very well be wrong. And please don't misunderstand me: He has written some very good poems that are not nonsense; but what he does best — in my opinion — is compose beautiful fakes of the likes of Eliot and Stevens. And he has a flock of wannabes that are not nearly as good at it as he is.

I think it's obvious to everyone who's paying attention that there is a concerted effort by many bright minds in the world to cause confusion rather than work toward understanding. Genesis 11:9 has never been more relevant. Or 1 Corinthians 14:9.

Here are two famous Stevens poems, each having 18 lines. Let anyone who likes, compare and contrast them. Do any of the images seem rhyme- or slant-rhyme driven? Does the duplication of the images (tails, unsoft "feet") seem coincidental or fundamental? Does the meaning of the uncommon word "mort" in the first poem (the sound of a hunting horn made at the death of the quarry, a deer) align with the possibly dead feet in the second poem? Is it appropriate to single out these two poems for random comparison, considering the quantity of poetry Stevens wrote?

The Bird With The Coppery, Keen Claws

Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.

(The rudiments of tropics are around,
Aloe of ivory, pear of rusty rind.)
His lids are white because his eyes are blind.

He is not paradise of parakeets,
Of his gold ether, golden alguazil,
Except because he broods there and is still.

Panache upon panache, his tails deploy
Upward and outward, in green-vented forms,
His tip a drop of water full of storms.

But though the turbulent tinges undulate
As his pure intellect applies its laws,
He moves not on his coppery, keen claws.

He munches a dry shell while he exerts
His will, yet never ceases, perfect cock,
To flare, in the sun-pallor of his rock.


The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

xxxx