[SteveWal]

Stevens had promoted some thoughts in me.

Maybe the real division in poetry is not so much between metrical and free verse as between realism and abstraction.

Many of Stevens' poems can't be pinned down in the way Kate tries to do, any more than a painting by, say, de Kooning can be pinned down. Or a piece of purely instrumental music.
You can call it Padtoral Symphony and people will have images of fields and hills because you call it that. But it's not "about" that in the way that a piece of prose has a subject. It evokes feelings and images in the listener; not an arguement. And probably a different set of images for each reader or listener; or no images at all to some.

I think Stevens is at his best a very serious, but also very playful poet. He's exploring the language, seeing what it can do. He's using language in the way an abstract artist uses paint.

A realist poet, on the other hand, may do some of this, but in the end their real purpose is to tell a story, relate an experience, tell you something.

I don't think everything's quite as divided as that; lots of poets combine the two methods. I know I do. At one extreme, we have the Language Poets so-called for whom poetry seems to have no referent in the world outside the poem. At the other extreme, we have poets whose language is so bald, it could join the Marines, but which is definitely about something.

Just a few random thoughts.

Steven Waling

[This message has been edited by SteveWal (edited August 09, 2001).]