View Single Post
  #9  
Unread 12-01-2018, 11:53 AM
Allen Tice's Avatar
Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Brooklyn, NY USA
Posts: 6,119
Default

Regarding “vision”: My reading of the much later Auden has lead me to suspect that he sometimes relied on exotic stimulants to maintain productivity. Now, I shouldn’t suspect that! Personally, I want a very clear mind even if my literary productivity should suffer. I’m sure that it does, unfortunately. But first things first. If I seem an anti-pot (and cocaine) prude, well, that’s me nowadays. And I rely on studies about how long THC remains in body fat. Ok, dismiss me as Mr. Party-Pooper, but personal mental clarity comes way ahead of most things, even my artistic success.

The point here is that others are free to indulge as they want. Roads diverge. But it has always seemed to me to be stupid or inept to tip one’s hand in a poem about drug use, because it invalidates everything else in the poem to a certain degree. How can I, the awestruck admirer, sit gaping at the feet of a hookah-smoking caterpillar?

I do not know or say that Auden was high when he wrote this. My own experience suggests that some of its gleam might — just might — be the result of that. As I said, Auden and everyone else may do as they chose. I like the poem otherwise very much. Been there, done that, quit that, better for it.

People may despise my abstinence. And I’m probably wrong in this case with “vision” — maybe it’s an allusion to Yeats — but I can’t quite forgive that, to me, weak word.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 12-04-2018 at 05:51 PM. Reason: comma
Reply With Quote