Thursday, January 21, 2010

He's a Litterbug, but it Works for Him

Wallace Stevens is praised as one of the 'Big 4' Modernist poets. He is known for his huge vocabulary and "the supreme fusion of creative imagination and objective reality."
But so what.  The poem has to be worth it to you.
Many times I think his voice is that of a man in a suit with a strong baritone, telling everybody what to think. A guy who makes fearful waiters run whining to the cook. However, I do like this poem very much:

from Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around; no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

.
.
A lot of sculpture defines space with its differentness to what surrounds it. And a lot of litter is like this too, distracting from the more beautiful panorama. It depends on what we see and how we see it.

I hope he cleaned up after himself.

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