In a message dated 11/7/00 11:50:05 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
> I've been less interested in the manner of Williams,
> Zukofsky, Olson than that of Stevens, Wilbur, Hecht, where the point is
more
> in the said than in the unsaid, more in rhetoric than in voids.
Alan,
I think there are more similarities between Williams' & Stevens' work
than one would at first guess. Both were very concerned with the
physical world as it impinges on & is processed by our faculties.
Someone mentioned the "icy quality" of Stevens. But dare I say that
in Williams one often finds a "clinical" aspect/attitude to his subject...
the influence of years of medical practice, perhaps? Stevens certainly
was less concerned by human nature (dynamics of human relationships)
than Williams was, and Stevens wrote in his introduction to the first
WCW Collected (or Selected) that he found Williams to be a "romantic poet"
because he tended to dwell and to fuss too much about the real world.
(Dreadful paraphrase I'm sure).
Finnegan
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