Poem With A Line By Wallace Stevens
POEM WITH A LINE BY WALLACE STEVENS
by David Grove
The garden flew round with the angel,
the angel flew round with the clouds.
The clouds are sumo wrestlers
requisitioned in the name of the Emperor,
who has time on his hands like homemade
tattoos. He pores over a dog-eared
copy of The Kojiki as he rides
the carousel of a slide projector
round and round, cruising his old haunts.
It’s karaoke night at the volcano-
red brownstone in the apple tree.
The whole yacht club set is entombed there;
the full-throated peals of their laughter
delve deep into your privatemost
sleep. Take a piss, Miss, and miss:
a sudden salvo of ululations
cracks the mullioned windows, boomerangs
back into a vast cavern.
That vaudeville theater’s been in dry dock
ever since the slo-mo wink
began sliding down the ladybug-freckled
face of the beach. By a fortuitous coincidence,
the boiler operator in your jacket pocket
was also the silent typist who cured your pneumonia
with the blood of a black cat.
24% of this cup has already
served as something else.
Now it’s helping serve your drink.
Isn’t that something else?
I don’t believe in “be nice.” If Rimbaud didn’t like the poetry he was hearing, he’d shout “Merde!” That was good for the art of poetry.
I don’t, however, have anything mean to say about this poem by David Grove. It’s a brilliant stream-of-consciousness poem with some startling juxtapositions which remind me of Armantrout. It’s obscure, sure, but so is Wallace Stevens. If Grove has published any books, I’d like to read them.
*What may be good for the art of poetry may not be good for an individual’s need to express and share…and this takes precedence over any critique which is bound to contain subjective predilection of style or herd ideology in any case. To infer certainty into art as if it were a science is ridiculous and arrogant i would think. …So I very much look down upon this loud-mouthed Rimbaud who places the cart before the horse. I believe in being nice. Take what you can from a poem. Some art is by the few for the few and if you don’t like it then that ‘few’ is not ‘you’. Sorry to ramble on tangentially. But i agree it’s got some brilliant stream of consciousness in it!
i read through this poem a couple times and it just blew me away…one that i will print out and re-read and delight in seeing it from new angles. i like how a relationship and interconnectedness was made right away with ‘garden’, ‘angel’, and ‘clouds’ then the poem took off like a rocket from beatiful hell darting across an imaginative universe. Somehow couplets just seem to fit with this piece. i also noticed how the imagery or settings changed so dramatically–from carousels of slide projectors to karaoke night at the volcano, vast caverns, vaudeville theatres, ladybug beaches, to a jacket pocket. But all this would be for naught if there was no action to go along with it–the pictures move and tell a story. And, of course, i’m still mulling over which line is Wallace Steven’s…thx for sharing!
So which line is Wallace Stevens’s?
“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream” (Wallace Stevens)…made allusion to in these lines: “The clouds are sumo wrestlers requisitioned in the name of the Emperor, who has time on his hands like homemade tattoos. He pores over a dog-eared copy of The Kojiki as he rides the carousel of a slide projector
round and round, cruising his old haunts.” This is one.
But i think the whole poem in subject matter and perhaps form/style probably pays tribute to the work of Wallace Stevens (i’m guessing)…and in that way it has ‘a line by Wallace Stevens’.
Thanks Quasi, I’ll have to see if I can go find that poem.