... of intellect vs. emotion:
The Poems of Barry Goldensohn.
Stevens, with compatriots Williams, Eliot, et al, were, in their varied ways, obsessed with making language a hard, malleable material no less than clay or steel, and they wanted to write and elaborate upon images that didn't obscure the fantastic qualities of the world their language was supposed to be writing about. Perception is a dominant concern for this generation of modernist poets, and Stevens, I believe, followed the loose dictates brilliantly and developed a methodology of processing the world that could capture in it many of its amazing juxtapositions. What is amazing about Stevens' work is that he develops a philosophy of perceptual imagination from the world as it already is.
Too much? Depends on what you're chewing on.
ReplyDeleteHi Ted,
ReplyDeleteThe title reference was to what you said here: "There’s a lot of throat clearing harrummmmmphing going on in the lines as I read them where a slighter, more minuscule rhetoric could have prevailed."
Hi Frank
ReplyDeleteI'm too sensitive sometimes. All the same, the graph you cited seemed more a stalling action than anything else and removed it from my original post. So some good did come of this.
Well, I changed the title of the post, too. Best, F
ReplyDelete