Yup, very much the same club, tho I think there's a great deal of humor in
Stevens, and not just in The Emperor of Ice Cream and Ploughing on Sunday,
but check out Peter Quince at the Clavier--in fact, a tongue-in-cheekiness
is pretty pervasive. A point I can't demonstrate with citations, I hasten
to add, as Stevens reposes in storage with the rest of my non-Cuban books
for the nonce.
Mark
At 11:27 AM 10/27/2005, you wrote:
>Well I think both Mark & I are too, Stephen. WCW is the one I return to to
>read more often. But there are a few poems in the Stevens oeuvre that
>insist on being granted a sense of greatness by me. On the other hand, I
>never think of 'humoir' & Stevens at the same time....
>
>If only he'd gone further with the '13 Ways' vision & practice...
>
>Doug
>On 27-Oct-05, at 8:37 AM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
>
>>>I.... 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
>>
>>Not to be "gratuitous frivolous", but given the recent path of Hurricane
>>Wilma, "The Idea of Order at Key West" today has an odd irony about it -
>>probably en situ an idea that is on everybody's mind. Governor Jeb Bush
>>probably has a copy in his office, and the FEMA Director, too. I suspect
>>the Jar in Tennessee is flooded, maybe even broke, as well.
>>
>>Every time I try to read Steven's I tend to exhausted by the work's formal
>>beauty - even the humor, "The Empress of ..." seems like a Circus without
>>manure stains on its tarps. Of he same era, in the same country, I am much
>>more at home with Williams.
>>
>>Stephen V
>>Blog: http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>>
>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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