This will be brief; re you neglecting the blog, so soon after its inception? Funny you should ask. No, work actually kept me busy for more than 75% of the day, that is unusual, but this time of year expected. Suffice to say I have not spent the time I need to give to Wally Stevens his due. I won't let you down Wally, I promise. Maybe tonight, maybe.
There are students in my office that are hysterical, tears running down their faces...not because I refuse to put them in the class they need for next semester so that they can graduate and all their life goals will be perfectly aligned with the planets and the stars, but because they are reading some woman's blog. How does one get that way? Funny, that is. It is a skill to be so funny, with words alone, a truly impressive skill. I need practice and lots of it. Although its not really my intention, its keeps the reading fresh and comfortable to be able to infuse humor into the equation. I can't say I've ever been too funny. When i think back to my childhood and my teenage years and my twenties, I'm usually the one doing the laughing at other peoples jokes. I orbit funny people, I'm not usually being orbited myself. I forget jokes all the time, even ones I've heard a milluion times. I screw up punchlines; either I forget the story halfway or right at that very end, or i tell the joke incorrectly, speeding my way through it as I train wreck the delivery and the listener seems to lose focus, eyes glazed over. Badda-bing! take my wife, PLEASE.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Begin the begin...
I'm starting fresh with this blog-shite. My last attempt, although fun, fizzled out because of my usual tendencies toward losing focus.
I'm working on that. Have been for years.
Now where was I? Oh yeah. Regardless, I have wanted to get back to daily writing for quite some time, so here's to new beginnings, again and again.
I read in a blog recently by poet Brooklyn Copeland that she can not read Wallace Stevens. She has read him, many many times but she just can't seem to get the substance out of him. She keep trying the stubborn girl. I'm convinced she needs to like him, to get him, to say I too, my fellow poets, like Wally Stevens. Its not a flaw or a childish thing, its exactly how I feel, when I read poets who just make me go 'ack' or 'why am I reading this?' We need to know, what is going on here. What is this person's experience, be it wally Stevens or Jimmy Crackcorn.
She reads Stevens every so often, she admits, to see if there is something there the next time that she can swallow, that won't make her drowsy. Perhaps she hopes that he has transformed a bit from the mannequin in a 3 piece suit she sees him as to a half a man, a c entaur perhaps, in less corporate attire; a roll neck sweater, corduroy pants and flip-flops that clip-clop. My father does something similar with beets every year. He can't stands them, but every year he has a healthy helping of the junk, just to say he kept trying, how valiant of him. I mock him, I've said to him, you don't evver have to eat beets again if you don't want to and I laugh when he does it anyway. Ofcourse, I secretly admire the gesture; that proud post WW2 Italian mentality. Sometimes I want to deflate it, sometimes I praise it to myself.
So, Wallace Stevens. The first poem I ever read by Wally is 'The Emperor of Ice Cream' and i wasn't impressed, mainly because I didn't know much about poetry. Poet Richard Frost, my American Lit. professor from SUNY Oneonta, taught us some of my favorites to this day in that semester, Stevens was lower on the list of poets I admired that winter. He opened me up to the world of Whitman and Dickinson and Stephen Crane who profoundly changed my view of life and poetry as a medium for truly expressing myself.
Back to Stevens, That was Winter of 1999 and I've since only read him a half a dozen times; in comparison, I have read the hell out of Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', but, that probably isn't much of an oddity amongst blossoming poets. Whitman has a tendency to overshadow many poets, no better than many, just special is all.
Okay, a poem by Stevens:
THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM
by: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
I'll need some time on this one, although it isn't difficult and it doesn't make ME drowsy, I will, as this blog is titled, begin the begin, start again where I began with Mr. Stevens and take a gander at this poem for the next day or so. I'll give him his due becausze I hope that someday, some one give me mine. In the immortal words of Fred Flintstone, yabba-dabba-doo: 5pm on Monday the 29th of November 2010 and I'm signing out.
I'm working on that. Have been for years.
Now where was I? Oh yeah. Regardless, I have wanted to get back to daily writing for quite some time, so here's to new beginnings, again and again.
I read in a blog recently by poet Brooklyn Copeland that she can not read Wallace Stevens. She has read him, many many times but she just can't seem to get the substance out of him. She keep trying the stubborn girl. I'm convinced she needs to like him, to get him, to say I too, my fellow poets, like Wally Stevens. Its not a flaw or a childish thing, its exactly how I feel, when I read poets who just make me go 'ack' or 'why am I reading this?' We need to know, what is going on here. What is this person's experience, be it wally Stevens or Jimmy Crackcorn.
She reads Stevens every so often, she admits, to see if there is something there the next time that she can swallow, that won't make her drowsy. Perhaps she hopes that he has transformed a bit from the mannequin in a 3 piece suit she sees him as to a half a man, a c entaur perhaps, in less corporate attire; a roll neck sweater, corduroy pants and flip-flops that clip-clop. My father does something similar with beets every year. He can't stands them, but every year he has a healthy helping of the junk, just to say he kept trying, how valiant of him. I mock him, I've said to him, you don't evver have to eat beets again if you don't want to and I laugh when he does it anyway. Ofcourse, I secretly admire the gesture; that proud post WW2 Italian mentality. Sometimes I want to deflate it, sometimes I praise it to myself.
So, Wallace Stevens. The first poem I ever read by Wally is 'The Emperor of Ice Cream' and i wasn't impressed, mainly because I didn't know much about poetry. Poet Richard Frost, my American Lit. professor from SUNY Oneonta, taught us some of my favorites to this day in that semester, Stevens was lower on the list of poets I admired that winter. He opened me up to the world of Whitman and Dickinson and Stephen Crane who profoundly changed my view of life and poetry as a medium for truly expressing myself.
Back to Stevens, That was Winter of 1999 and I've since only read him a half a dozen times; in comparison, I have read the hell out of Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', but, that probably isn't much of an oddity amongst blossoming poets. Whitman has a tendency to overshadow many poets, no better than many, just special is all.
Okay, a poem by Stevens:
THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM
by: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
ALL the roller of big cigars, - The muscular one, and bid him whip
- In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
- Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
- As they are used to wear, and let the boys
- Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
- Let be be finale of seem.
- The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
- Take from the dresser of deal,
- Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
- On which she embroidered fantails once
- And spread it so as to cover her face.
- If her horny feet protrude, they come
- To show how cold she is, and dumb.
- Let the lamp affix its beam.
- The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
I'll need some time on this one, although it isn't difficult and it doesn't make ME drowsy, I will, as this blog is titled, begin the begin, start again where I began with Mr. Stevens and take a gander at this poem for the next day or so. I'll give him his due becausze I hope that someday, some one give me mine. In the immortal words of Fred Flintstone, yabba-dabba-doo: 5pm on Monday the 29th of November 2010 and I'm signing out.
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