essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay
Wallace Stevens is a poet of comedy, and comedy relieves the distress of tragic history. Comedy reconciles the restless, Romantic imagination with the present and the real. When the world falls apart, one must cultivate one’s garden, but also tell some comic stories over dinner. It is comedy, not alone but inseparable, that moves the infinite conversation on.
In early 2017 I wrote a series of posts – or let us call them essays – on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. I wrote it still aiming…
XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs. Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird…
XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird I dwell in a land where the rivers are always moving,…
XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of…
IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird There is a strange…
“Psychoanalysts don’t usually write essays; they tend to write lectures or papers or chapters, or what are called, perhaps optimistically, contributions.” Adam Phillips “Coda: up to a point” in One…
Image source: Gitksan woman Shaman and Chief, Kispiox, British Columbia, 1909, by George Thornton Emmons Collection no. 131 (University of Washington Libraries) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Why do we write…
Yesterday I visited the State Library of Victoria and there I read from the Collected Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens is perhaps my most loved American poet,…
Wallace Stevens is a poet for lovers of beauty among ruins. For those of us in the second half of life he is of unique importance: diligent insurance executive, sometimes…
