Stevens on the brain

The name Wallace Stevens has come up a lot recently. 2 people from way back, Jon and Hilary, invoked him practically on successive days, completely unconnectedly.

Stevens and William Carlos Williams seem like the rare poets who held down regular jobs, and who therefore should speak to the souls of those of us who also have jobs. Like a high brow Dilbert. But people appear to identify with Williams less, maybe because he was a doctor dealing with actual bodies and so not subject to the same degree of tedium as Stevens, lawyer and insurance exec. Or maybe because Williams with his red wheelbarrow became an over-anthologized icon of an insufficiently threatening avant-garde. Me, I like the guy.

But I remember when I went into consulting and found myself working for insurance companies, I thought that Stevens was gonna speak to me, that we would be sharing some deep insights into some alchemical blend of the literary and the actuarial. So I bought a collection of poems. In my old house, I never got to reading it much. When we brought our new house, the front porch seemed like the perfect place to sit and read Wallace Stevens and consider things. So I put the little book out there on the bench. And it gathered dust. Or I would pick it up and Natalie would come round the corner screaming. Or I'd start reading something and space out. And then the dog or Natalie must have mangled it, because the cover got torn up. And then fall came, and the cold winds and rain set to blowing, and it was clearly time for the poor neglected cheap used book to go inside, and wait for another spring, when maybe I would read some of it.

I've done better with Cheever. Short stories lend themselves to being read.