[stylist] So Long, Mr. Stevens?

[Homme, James]

Hi,
This reminds me that yesterday I checked the new books on Bookshare. A lot of them were poetry. So far I haven't been happy with reading poetry with screen readers, so maybe I will try some audio books. Can anyone recommend something to read for me? I want to read poetry that might be for someone like myself, who wants to dip my toe in the water. I also want to try to write some, so what would I read to get started? Maybe even a kids book on writing poetry would work, if you think that might do it.

Thanks.

Jim



-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L Houts
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2014 1:18 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] So Long, Mr. Stevens?




So Long, Mr. Stevens?

Hey Peeps,

So, for many years now I've considered Wallace Stevens to be my favorite
poet.  If you don't know his work, Stevens's poetry has a baroque and
dreamlike
feel to it.  He uses uncommon words, irregular phrasing and a nearly
infurating logic to create startling effects in the minds of his
readers.  But I recently
downloaded a Stevens collection from BARD and started listening to his
poems.  And they still seem delightful in some ways, but also
unnecessarily dense.
And though I'm a fairly well educated dude, I found that I don't really
get him anymore.  Some poems still work wonders for me, like "Anecdote
of the Prince
of Peacocks", and even "The Emperor of Ice Cream", which I know by
heart. But his work just doesn't do the magic for me that it used to.
Not surprisingly,
this revelation comes at a time when my own poetry is changing to a more
accessible mode.  Last summer, I wrote a number of poems which have a
lot of rhyme
in them and, I like to think, a kind of joy in the language itself.
Poems like that, I think, can be delightful, even useful. But sometimes
when you look
into them very deeply, you find that they're a kind of Hall of Mirrors,
and only reflect themselves. Within the last six months or so, though,
my work
seems to be more serious, more focused on suffering, death, human
fragility and loss. There's a cost to this development, of course. My
mother recently
complained that all of my poems nowadays seem very dark and full of
sadness.  And I had to say to her that, well, Mom, my last fifteen
years, during which
I lost my eyesight and several friends, haven't been very easy for me.
But the upshot is that I feel that my current work is really about
something, something
important, and that I'm now using the craft to arrive at deeper truths
about Bill Houts and his world, rather than performing amusing language
tricks --may
Mr. Stevens's shade grant me pardon.


--Bill

--
"Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."

           --Jane Siberry













--
"Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."

           --Jane Siberry


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