Warning: The following post contains a confession of naive sentiments and deep ignorance. For those of you with real appreciation and a critical eye for poetry, prepare to be horrified.
Almost one year ago, Evan posted that Stevens' "poetry is invulnerable to theory. If he decides to hit one of his concepts on the head with an anvil, it gets right back up again, unhurt." Since I've just finished reading Harmonium, this statement caught my attention. I'd like to think that Stevens' eye for a certain, rough-hewn America and his collections of jangling nouns that comprise a quirky sensuousness have definite bearing on my interests, but I remain unsure how to proceed.
So you know that I've always resented the theory-literature and novel-poetics divide that refuses to die, despite efforts to kill it off dating back to Marx-Shakespeare-Freud-The Bible. But as I make my way through my Generals lists, every time I get to a collection of poetry, I become overwhelmed with a distinct feeling of helplessness. I turn through the pages, most often thinking something along the lines of "Oh, that's beautiful/unusual/obscure/interesting." But the minute I try to think beyond my initial impressions, the poetry seems to turn to sand and runs through my fingers. How can I make the poetry cohere with the vast majority of my list, which is composed of novels and theory? Since I tend to move between these two categories with some ease and fluidity, what is it about poetry that might make such an exchange more difficult? Am I just too novice, or too resistant?
So there it is: the crudest of questions. Can you enlighten me, dear bloggers?
