"Sunday Morning," one of his best poems, I think, is imagined through the
consciousness of a woman.
Stevens had an unusually miserable marriage to a woman he apparently loved,
which probably made him pretty edgy. But I wonder about the accusation of
mysogyny without citations. I'm not disagreeing, but without the citations
it's difficult to either agree or disagree, or to know what mysogyny means
in this instance. What does it mean, for instance, that he explicitly
excludes women, since he doesn't write about daily life? Should there have
been an empress of ice cream?
I don't think Stevens is someone I can learn from as a poet, but I also
love Ideas of Order, which includes The Idea of Order at Key West. I
treasure a very tattered copy of the first edition which I happened on in a
used bookstore years ago.
Mark
At 10:38 AM 10/26/2005, you wrote:
>I can't speak to the whole, but I remember that in "The Idea..' the
>central figure is a woman, although not what I'd call a fully
>representative one.
>
>Perhaps that coldness has also kept me from true love of the oeuvre.
>
>But I wonder if perhaps the term sexless is more appropriate for his work...?
>
>On the other hand, I remember reading, once, long ago, & I can't recall
>the book's title, a work by a physicist, who found Stevens's poetry a
>usefully analogous way of thinking about sub-atomic physics & what it
>tells us about the universe. Maybe just philosophically....
>
>Doug
>On 25-Oct-05, at 3:35 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
>
>>Hi Doug
>>
>>On 26/10/05 12:23 AM, "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>>Alison: I've never read that deeply into Stevens, so, knowing only
>>>some of the best known poems, I didn't know he was a misogynist. What I
>>>do know is that, although great at what he does, what he does isn't as
>>>much what I try to do as those in the Pound-WIlliams lineage...
>>
>>I've always been a sucker for sheer beauty. When I was around 12 I pinched
>>the Albatross Book of Verse from my father and claimed it as my own. It's
>>actually quite a good anthology, though as I remember I took no notice of
>>any of the names of the poets in it. The Idea of Order at Key West and
>>Susannah and the Elders just hypnotised me.
>>
>>But there is something indefinably cold in the poetry, which comes out as an
>>empty formal purity in the lesser works. I remember a poetry which
>>explicitly excluded women, but not in the way that, say, Baudelaire does,
>>which somehow doesn't bother me as much (I just growl, you bastard, and read
>>on).
>>
>>Best
>>
>>A
>>
>>
>>
>>Alison Croggon
>>
>>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>>
>Douglas Barbour
>11655 - 72 Avenue NW
>Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
>(780) 436 3320
>
>The blank page
>as merely an interval or
>an intrusion. We could not rescue it
>
>nor could we huddle, as if the page were
>big enough.
>
> Kathleen Fraser
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