tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8689671.post6713717204701792932..comments2024-01-04T02:20:14.170+01:00Comments on Chamber of Secrets: Wallace Stevens: Final Soliloquy of the Interior ParamourTheklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10068144182099086220noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8689671.post-743148617796906302018-11-23T13:22:33.467+01:002018-11-23T13:22:33.467+01:00How is it that simply anybody can write a website ...How is it that simply anybody can write a website and acquire as widespread as this? Its not like youve said something incredibly spectacular –more like youve painted a reasonably picture over a difficulty that you simply recognize nothing concerning I don’t want to sound meanOn the supplementshttp://onthegosupplments.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8689671.post-83692260674804757092014-04-29T04:53:21.813+02:002014-04-29T04:53:21.813+02:00I do find many of Stevens's poems complicated,...I do find many of Stevens's poems complicated, or strange, or some of each. I can recall one or two comments I've read by other poets, mentioning the oddness of his diction, his choice of words. This is a quality that moves through much of his work.<br /><br />I do find something of the quality you talk about here, of the translucence (or, perhaps, luminosity) in his sentences and words. He mentions light, or qualities of light -- sometimes implied rather than explicit -- in many of his poems.<br /><br />I might describe the poem as a philosophical meditation or speculation. I'm not sure if the word "holy" would have occurred to me, even with the mention of God in one of the lines. This perhaps has as much to do with my perspective as with anything in the poem itself.<br /><br />I do find in much of Stevens's work a searching for order in the observed world. (I think immediately of the title of another of his poems, "The Idea of Order at Key West." Key West, the town in the string of islands that reaches out from the southern end of Florida, a place saturated with oceanic light.)<br /><br />One of the features of the English language that many writers have commented on is the hybrid quality of the language -- it's fundamentally a Germanic language, which has assimilated a large amount of Latin vocabulary (along with elements from many other languages). Since the early 20th century, many poets and writers in English have tended to favor the Germanic, Anglo-Saxon core of the language, more than the French and Latin elements -- not as an absolute choice, but as a relative tendency.<br /><br />Not all poets writing in English, certainly -- Wallace Stevens is one exception. Immediately with the title of this poem, I hear music in the Latin-derived words: the dancing L sounds in "Final Soliloquy," the rounded R sounds in "Interior Paramour."<br /><br />I should perhaps say that Wallace Stevens has never been a poet with whose work I've felt any great affinity. But I do read him now and again. I find all of this fascinating.Lyle Daggetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10731915540520704368noreply@blogger.com