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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