Dear COJ, couldn't one read that much of that poem, maybe all of it, as expressing a fear or discomfort at having a god of some particular size (like a decorative garden gnome) in the house commenting and making remarks at awkward times like a resident mother-in-law or nosy neighbor? I am not theologizing here, just trying to get a sense if the poem. The idea just expressed makes me giggle, and if Stevens didn't want a yapping gnome, I wouldn't either -- unless it was very wise, seldom spoke, and was uncommonly diplomatic. As to his "deaf" god, well that's not a particularly useful god -- with its nose in its newspaper or whatever. This seems to me to be more of an annoyed manifesto than a poem I could care about much. A bit of pique. Almost a rather tedious high school paper editorial tricked up with spelling puns and easy rhetoric. I think, COJ, that your analysis is better than the poem.
|