[stylist] So Long, Mr. Stevens?
Jackie Williams
jackieleepoet at cox.net
Fri Apr 18 17:17:49 UTC 2014
Bill,
This is an interesting reflection on both Wallace Stevens and your own
growth. Like you, I have really enjoyed Steven's work, and particularly,
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which I patterned one of my poems
after in a very minimal way.
I like the concept of finding many ways of looking at something, whether a
small thing, or a big idea.
Your poetry does reflect some darkness, but that is the experience you are
dealing with now. It is part of the reason we write poetry. The release that
comes from probing into ourselves.
Your poetry is very "meaty."
Jackie Lee
Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L
Houts
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 10:07 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List; kevin haggerty
Subject: [stylist] 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 infuriating 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
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