Not much, no. Just popping in to check messages and the like. How are you?
You still around?
Thanks for appreciating it!
Thanks for your honesty!
In a moment of pure synchronicity, I just opened the book to have another look at that 'Metaphors...' poem and turned straight to 'Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock'. That was weird. It's like Stevens is checking his blog....
I can't explain my dislike that easily. I know The Emperor of Ice Cream by heart and really love it. A few others work well for me too, like Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz, but...oh, I don't know. I just got this collected works of his. Maybe I happened to read some bad ones first. I just opened it at random and started finding good stuff.
Weird. I really did think that the parallel was intentional. Stevens was one of the first poets I got into, after doing a paper on "The Man with the Blue Guitar" (which I still rate very highly). Most of his stuff still works for me.
Just read it in my Stevens Collected. Interesting comparison. I don't know that many poems that use that much repetition. Thanks.
Don't feel bad, please. I was being flippant. It was a perfectly fair comment and interesting and I'll check out the poem you mentioned now. Anyway, I'd completely forgotten the 'Disillusionment...' one which was a direct reference, obviously. The problem is (whisper it, especially around firefangled) I don't actually like Stevens that much.
Um, to take that comment maybe more seriously than it was intended, I did like the poem, it made me smile, and only reminded me of Stevens' "Metaphors of a Magnifico," which I thought was deliberate, like the Disillusionment poem. Gosh, now I feel bad...
