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)

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.