tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post3881228127238774181..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Wallace Stevens: Thinking of a Relation between the Images of MetaphorsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54760908223016721292018-06-24T16:46:29.130-07:002018-06-24T16:46:29.130-07:00Thanks very much Martin.
Think I know what you me...Thanks very much Martin.<br /><br />Think I know what you mean about the world anymore.<br /><br />Hoffnung = Kaputt.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11033843376580221462018-06-24T02:28:24.733-07:002018-06-24T02:28:24.733-07:00Minor point by belated reader of this entry: Holly...Minor point by belated reader of this entry: Holly Stevens in her Palm at the End of the Mind (selected poems) dates the poem 1945, not 47. <br /><br />I don't read your blog all that often, though I value your poetry, the poetry by others you highlight, and your observations - because I can hardly deal with all the horrific details of the waves of inhumanity rolling over the world. I once - in the 60s and 70s - believed there was some hope. Quoth the raven...Martinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15035375302901269833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3113262941475821752015-05-30T10:16:37.367-07:002015-05-30T10:16:37.367-07:00Many thanks, Steve and Jonathan.
In my now no-lon...Many thanks, Steve and Jonathan.<br /><br />In my now no-longer-quite-bound, time-shredded, mildewed, sowbug-colony-hosting copy of Stevens' poems, I see that next to this poem there is a tiny, carefully inscribed asterisk, made in ink, the sort of mark I discover in a very few of my oldest books, of which this is one.<br /><br />It was probably the opening lines of the poem that spoke to me, then, when I made that mark.<br /><br />Up and down and in and out with Stevens and with everything, since then, but I find that this poem still does speak. <br /><br />One has periods of asking of poetry that it have a heart, and with Stevens that is probably the wrong demand, at least in any common sense.<br /><br />I have never responded to the "thought" or "ideas" in Stevens which academic essayists are so endlesssly on about; I have yet to notice the presence of either.<br /><br />"No ideas but in the words". <br /><br />Still, there is an identifiable heart-place in the poems, in the imagination, and in the personal history -- and this is it.<br /><br />The places and locales and place-names and curious slanted evocations of history are what bring me back to this period in the work.<br /><br />"For each man, then, certain subjects are congenital," Stevens once wrote. "Now, the poet manifests his personality, first of all, by his choice of subject."<br /><br />As he sank back into himself, in later life, with the leisure and time to do so (he was vice-president of the Hartford, at the time he wrote this poem), his family and ancestral history, and the accompanying originary locales and landscapes, the real and imagined presences of his own personal past ("the old place", as he once called it) did emerge in the poems -- as words, images, sounds, and the odd impalpable "offscreen" or "offstage" murmurations that lend the verse a particular "weather", for me.<br /><br />The primal "own-world" landscape hinted at in this poem is also, I believe, the paradisal landscape evoked in Sunday Morning, a poem saturated with originary presence -- the deer walking upon the mountains, the quail whistling their spontaneous cries, the sweet berries ripening in the wilderness.<br /><br />That's not Connecticut or Florida, it's the country of the watershed of the Schuylkill, river system of Stevens' youth.<br /><br />As to the "less enjoyable history" (Jonathan) which I've dared broach in my brief commentary, as problematic as that history may (should) now seem for us as conscientious readers, it was surely quite a bit less enjoyable still for the Delaware / Lenape peoples, and to that degree Stevens' poetic appropriation of place-name and mythic "native" presence takes on, to my benumbed ear, a hollow ring -- it feels a bit "off", and a bit more "off", still, the deeper one looks into it.<br /><br />Which of course in American white-world academia, "criticism" does not do. Too close for comfort.<br /><br />Oh, and Steve, that great blue heron of yours flashed me back to our last days in Bo Ville now so very long ago, when along the uprising stretch of Mesa Road there were erected those sewer ponds, a lovely impromptu bird refuge -- wonder if they're still there now -- the ponds I mean not the herons.<br /><br />Here, the freeway-feeder crows have rallied after the road-killing of one of their group last week, and this morning are again recklessly swooping into the busy roadway, risking all for some scrap of trash, bickering so noisily one might almost think they are furious, not merely furiously territorial.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-80050208625056522582015-05-30T09:08:45.647-07:002015-05-30T09:08:45.647-07:00Love the unstated theme. The history behind it is ...Love the unstated theme. The history behind it is less enjoyable. Jonathan Chanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03647746685252448938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-59861854537131554152015-05-29T15:58:43.132-07:002015-05-29T15:58:43.132-07:00Tom,
"In the one ear of the fisherman, who i...Tom,<br /><br />"In the one ear of the fisherman, who is all<br />One ear, the wood-doves are singing a single song.<br />. . .<br /> <br /> The fisherman is all<br />One eye, in which the dove resembles a dove.<br /> <br />There is one dove, one bass, one fisherman."<br /><br />Such a nice, and hitherto unknown, Stevens poem -- together with commentary which goes with it. Meanwhile, here in the field (just mowed just yesterday) the relation between the images of metaphors continues -- a great blue heron walking around looking for a snake for supper (or maybe a rodent) . . .<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.com