[William A. Baurle]

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.