Williams was something of a prick about women, even by the standards of his
own day. The Young Housewife has always bothered me in that regard. That
he's probably aware of what he's doing doesn't make it any prettier.
Rochelle Owens does a pretty savage take on Williams in relation to women
in his W.C. Fields in French Light, in New and Selected Poems 1961-1996,
published by yours truly.
Far stranger than The Young Housewife is his play The Stain of Love, in
which a doctor/poet living with his wife in New Jersey has a heart attack
while screwing a patient and dies. The patient has to call the wife to tell
her the bad news. The wife becomes a recluse, apparently schizophrenic out
of grief, until the poet's ghost comes to her and gives her permission to
flirt with the milk man.
Stranger still, Williams' first heart attack, which almost killed him,
happened precisely that way, and his lady friend was the one to call
Flossie. One can imagine Flossie's reaction in the audience at the play's
opening. We tend as writers to forget that those we love may want their
private lives to remain private. This seems to me an extreme case.
At 11:13 AM 10/29/2005, you wrote:
>An interesting point, Mark, that there is a subtle sense of humor there.
>Drawn out, so to speak, demanding taking the whole of the thing in. I
>don't tend to think of his work in such terms, but, yeah....
>
>On the other hand, Williams could be subtly funny too, only much of how he
>is is now lost, apparently, to politically correct (& just historically
>ignorant) young readers, if Marjorie Perloff is correct in her discussion
>of teaching Williams's 'The Young Housewife' is anything to go by (in her
>recent Differentials).
>
>Doug
>
>
>On 27-Oct-05, at 5:10 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>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
>>
>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
|