A very interesting slice-of-life article about herpetologists (I love that word!):
http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/a-hundred-ways-to-be-a-frog/
I would wager that the title is a reference to the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Stevens is one of my favorite open-form poets; I don't generally like open-form, but he is proof that it can be done extremely well.
Showing posts with label Wallace Stevens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wallace Stevens. Show all posts
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock (by Wallace Stevens)
One of the few vers libre poems I really like:
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
by Wallace Stevens (1915)
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
The imagery, of course, is beautiful. What makes it work for me, methinks, is the repetition -- of colors, of words, of sounds -- which lends to it a certain sense of structure and thematic coherence.
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
by Wallace Stevens (1915)
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
The imagery, of course, is beautiful. What makes it work for me, methinks, is the repetition -- of colors, of words, of sounds -- which lends to it a certain sense of structure and thematic coherence.
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