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
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