Monday, January 14, 2008

Unreal, give back to us what once you gave

Whatever else the internet does, it does this and, for that, I am grateful. While holding on the phone waiting for a BT human being to talk to me, I vaguely browsed. Some echo in my mind took me to this glorious poem by Wallace Stevens. I read and reread for 20 minutes, the phone between my shoulder and my ear. BT never answered. Their incompetence and the wonderful web had provided me with a little holiday in paradise.

2 comments:

  1. The Internet is, of course, also largely responsible for the ongoing destruction of the focus and concentration required to appreciate fully such poetry. A monitor screen remains a poor substitute for pleasure in the printed word.

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  2. Very few modern poets could manage that simplicity, and yet to write of something so 'difficult'...

    "No crown is simpler than the simple hair"

    It's like a Medieval poem, something from the Harley manuscript, but so much going on under such a simple surface. i guess WS's power - like Yeats' - comes from that ability to take an immensely tricky & complicated mental & emotional moment, and then pour it into such graspable, limpid words.

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