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Attempts to define poetry

Jan 31, Toni rated it it was amazing Shelves: No, I have not read the whole book. This is a compilation of his poetry. I understand about 5 percent of what is going on. Even if I understood nothing, I would still love the way he uses words. He writes a lot about poetry and imagination; I always enjoy people who write about writing and words Jun 20, Matt rated it really liked it Shelves: A substitute for all the gods.

Dec 05, Mjackman rated it it was ok Recommends it for: Forget me reviewing this. I just want to point to this hilarious debate over this book, which I was assigned in college, and append some remarks. By Jmark If poets aren't interested in being understood, they will have to resign themselves to being read by no one except English Lit drones. There was a time when poetry was so popular in the USA that many daily newspapers had daily poems and the average worker with a Forget me reviewing this.

There was a time when poetry was so popular in the USA that many daily newspapers had daily poems and the average worker with a grade school education could recite several great American poems by heart. That was also the time when poets wrote about things that people experienced and could relate to. I have a Masters degree. I can read Spinoza and the Greek dramatists and poets with pleasure.

I started this book because Stevens was said to be a great poet. After forcing myself through twenty of these poems I still had no idea what any of them were about.

Poem of the week: A Mind of Winter by Martha Kapos | Books | The Guardian

I might as well have been reading Icelandic for all I got out of them. Here's an example of how Stevens unnecessarily obscures his poetry: Its appearance stops the reader as abruptly as if he had driven into a brick wall. Who or what is "the halo-John"? The reader searches through the rest of the poem for clues. Ok, it is a religious poem so maybe he means St. John the Evangelist because saints have halos. But why not just say "St. In fact, it detracts as the reader has to stop reading the poem in order to do the equivalent of a crossword puzzle exercise in order to proceed further.

If the reader isn't christian, he may be completely out of luck. Stevens doesn't just do this sort of thing once or twice; his poems are full of this sort of nonsense. If a poem needs a commentary in order to appreciate it, the poem is a failure because this sort of poet is incapable of speaking to the reader without an intermediary, a literary priest to offer sacrifices for the poor, ignorant layman who has insufficient piety and intelligence to approach the divine mysteries of poetry on his own.

The reader has his revenge, though. Poets must either scrap with each other for literary prizes that mean the difference between starvation and three steady meals a day or slog away at teaching jobs since no one will buy their work. My copy of this book of poetry will meet its end in the dumpster. It's not the poet's obligation to write down to your level. Stevens is easily the greatest poet in the language in the 20th century, and most of his fellow Americans have never heard of him.

Another "Great" poet who no one has ever heard of. Sort of how Gustav Mahler is the greatest composer in the world even though no one listens to him, right? If there isn't an audience for someone's work, it isn't great. No audience, no talent. I know someone who likes eating yeast and butter sandwiches. He says that this foul tasting, bitter snack is the greatest food in the world. The rest of the world is just too pedestrian to understand, I guess.

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What a thoroughly anti-poetry, soullessly over-educated little twerp of a reverse-snob you are! What a straw-bale heart you possess!

I bet you spit on other literary "incomprehensibles" like Dickinson, Beckett, and Nabokov, too. A poetic definition of philistinism, as conceived by J. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Thus, I sincerely hope that yours is merely a case of envy-addled, intellectually sophomoric piffle, as common as it is remediable, in due course of time. Does Wallace Stevens suck? There are quite a few poems of his that I enjoy, such as "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" or his short poems about watching nature. But I must agree with Jmark, at least about this volume, which I remember well from college, that it doesn't really seem to make a fuck of a lot of sense.

At times, I was totally irritated by this twaddle, and didn't understand why it was assigned, as I'd have to show up in class and pretend I understood something unfathomable. It seemed to me to be a class about bluffing. So I think my verdict is mixed. Most poems I've read by Wallace Stevens have sucked. Some poems by Wallace Stevens I've liked.

The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play

And, even though I like some of his poems, I feel he's overrated. Instead of buying a whole book, sample what's available online and enjoy what you can. Also, just judging by his online "defenders," I'd say they seem to be unreasonable people. I liked Jmark's "review" very much, found it readable, pertinent to the book, and entertaining. The others who took issue with him barely discussed the work, engaged in poor rhetorical tricks and just seemed outraged that their golden god had been blasphemed. As if to say, "That can't be right!

I paid several thousand dollars to be taught that Wallace Stevens was great! Feb 01, Barbara rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is a review of the sample edition on the Nook.


  1. Poem of the week: A Mind of Winter by Martha Kapos.
  2. The Last Time.
  3. The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play by Wallace Stevens.
  4. Just a Real Mans Love.
  5. Legend of the Phoenix: A Visit Home.
  6. theranchhands.com | Academy of American Poets?
  7. poetry | Definition, Types, Terms, Examples, & Facts | theranchhands.com.

I will eventually download the entire book, but I'm so behind on reading at the moment so I do not want to purchase any books until I finish most of what I already have on my Nook. This particular Nook sample is very generous, in my opinion. It includes ten poems. Some Nook samples of poetry collections include a half of one poem; some include three or four poems; sometimes you're in for a real treat -- for example, Allen Ginsberg's Collected Po This is a review of the sample edition on the Nook. AND, there are also some disappointing samples that only give you the first few pages of the introduction, so how can I really make a purchase decision based on that?

Selected Poems and a Play. Here are the poems in my sample: But now I want to read every poem ever written by Wallace Stevens, because I absolutely loved every one of the poems in this sample. I think I've read each poem around four or five times over the past few months, and I am not bored of any of them yet. Which means I may never get bored of them, although I am aware of the possibility that once I read a lot more of Stevens' work I may find some of these somewhat dull in comparison. Expecting to become bored with poems after reading them a certain amount of times may seem like a strange perception or expectation to those of you who are reading this review, but reading poetry on a consistent basis and reading the same poems and poets over and over is very new to me.

I've always been interested in poetry as an art, but my extent of reading poetry would be to pick up a collection of poems by someone I might have been curious about -- Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Ginsberg, Plath, Eliot, etc. To me, reading poetry from the first to last page in a book was only done when reading Shakespeare, Homer, Ovid, and the Greek tragedians. Well, all that has changed for me recently. I love reading novels, but around six months ago I just needed a break from novels, but I wasn't in the mood for nonfiction either.

I had a few poetry anthologies at home, so I read through them to get an idea of which poets I liked the most. It turned out that I like and love a LOT of poets from a variety of time periods, genres, styles, and cultures, but on the Nook it's easiest to find 19th and 20th century British and American poetry. To be fair, I probably should not be writing a review of Stevens' The Palm at the End of the Mind, because, again, I only have the Sample Edition with only ten of the poems, and the one play in this book was obviously not included in my edition.

BUT, I can say this: And all of these poems felt that way for me. Sunday Morning, the longest of these ten poems, is wonderful. Even though Stevens is still very new to me, I feel that I've really become used to his style over the past few months, and even though Sunday Morning is a long poem it just feels so perfect exactly as it is.

For an Old Woman in a Wig is fantastic. I love some of the questions and statements that Stevens includes in his poems. In this poem he asks "Is death in hell more than death in heaven? Domination of Black is also beautiful. Blanche McCarthy is magnificent, and so profound. And the shortest poem, Tea, is also magnificent. The Silver Plough-Boy is interesting and mysterious, but it makes me feel a bit scared, depending on my mood.

There's something "nightmarish" about it. As for the poems that I did not mention, I loved them also. Maybe because reading poetry the way I'm reading it now is so new to me, I really don't have a lot to say about any specific poem except to say how I feel about it. Poetry is art, and for many people art cannot be described.

If someone asks me to describe a painting or a great work of music, I don't want to describe it. It's personal to me. I will do what I did here -- I may say "I think this painting is beautiful" or "I love the way this music makes me feel" but if I get too involved in trying to explain how I feel about specific works of art it just takes away the "personal" part of it for me. So, briefly sharing how I felt about the poems in my sample edition of The Palm at the End of the Mind is the most I can do right now, and I hope that what I have said about these poems will inspire someone to read them.

One thing that I am absolutely sure of is that I WILL eventually get this entire book of poems, and I will read every poem in here and perhaps the play as well. But for now I have two other Sample Editions of collections of Wallace Stevens' poems, and I am glad that I still have so much more of his work to look forward to. Jan 09, Salvatore rated it it was amazing. Or, just go read 'The River of Rivers in Connecticut' already. It makes me regret that I didn't take the Stevens lecture at college opted for the more familiar path of Woolf but it makes me happy that I 'came to Stevens on "my own"'.

I mentioned to N that I generally don't like Collected Poems not organised by the poet's previous books; and yet Stevens's growth as a poet, his evolution of his mind, are amazing to see in this selection, which is organised by chronological order instead. Kudos to Holly S. At another conversation with N and his poet friend L, I mentioned that reading Stevens in chronological order is watching him find ways of exploring a similar idea over and over again a la Jane Austen and her marriage-trick pony ; L said that yes, it really all comes down to 'Death is the mother of beauty'.

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She's wrong and not wrong. Somehow it's all about that and yet it feels so much more. Stevens and Eliot are tackling the similar issues and both are being so intellectual about it - and yet Stevens comes off as more tangible. Less academic, more immersed in our 'today' perhaps. We are the world in which we walk; we make it all. I'm not complaining about either master poet. Yes, to rereading his work with gusto for years to come! Feb 20, James rated it it was amazing. My favorite poems include: Apr 08, uh8myzen rated it it was amazing Shelves: Wallace Stevens has been an important part of my life since I first read my dad's copy of his Collected Poems when I was sixteen Twenty years later and I always have The Palm at the End of the Mind on my Reading Shelf and read a poem or two at least once every few months Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is one of my favorite pieces of writing.

Definitely in my Top Ten Poets: Jan 03, Steve Fiver rated it it was amazing.

Feb 22, James rated it it was amazing Shelves: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens is one of my favorite books, but it is rather unwieldy and heavy, perfect for a study but not to carry around. This selection of his works, edited by his daughter, includes all of his truly great poems and is the ideal edition for any who want to read Stevens, say outdoors. Aug 11, Jennifer rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Wallace Stevens is beyond brilliant.

He may be my favorite poet, and The Palm at the End of the Mind contains such amazing stuff. He is lyrical and musical and makes my soul hurt. Almost everything is amazing. In fact, I should reread this soon. For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. William Blake would have done the same. Wilson 3 November 9: A Life in Songs Ann Wroe. The sequence of the sermon to the birds is especially successful: See also Poetry St Francis of Assisi the crusades.

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