1. To all readers of Stevens who have not already encountered Helen Vendler’s Words Chosen Out Of Desire and On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens’ Longer Poems , I recommend both books, or, rather, I suggest they are imperative to the fullest understanding and appreciation of Stevens. They redeem to his poetry qualities of passion and investment which are too easily lost in the blaze of his seemingly detached invention.
2. I overheard Donald Barthelme talking to a poet and Don said that Stevens had been Don’s “lodestar” as a young writer. No two writers more inspire me to try to write than Donald Barthelme and Wallace Stevens.
***
James Robison has had many stories in The New Yorker, has won a Whiting Grant, a Rosenthal from the American Academy, published two books and has had an issue of the Mississippi Review dedicated entirely to his short fictions. He has been in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize, co-wrote a feature film that is just out, and is good company on long car trips.
Smart stuff, Jim, & thanks for contributing. Let me corroborate item #2, as well; on more than one occasion, I heard DB insisting on Stevens’ importance.
John, did you study with DB?
Greg, I did. Don was an inspiring teacher &, afterwards, always willing to go to bat for me. Much as I honor the man’s memory, though, I don’t want to distract attention from Robison’s thoughtful post — or worse, from Wallace Stevens. What matters here is how Robison ends item #1, talking about the passion w/ which Stevens invested his joshing rococo. That’s something Donald Barthelme had to pay special attention to as well; he had to locate the emotion in the prodigies of his imagination, & in his well-nigh unparalleled gift for phrase-making.
That’s a very young picture of Don…
Now see here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879207,00.html
Adding, I have a good friend who looks astonishingly similar to Donald Barthelme. He even has the beard (though he wears a mustache with it).
Set for life he is, Halloween-wise.
Huh. I didn’t realize the Stevens/Barthelme connection. Interesting, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Definitely something I’m going to give some thought to. Thanks for this.
—from Tracy Daugherty’s indispensable Hiding Man (page 419, I think–Google Books is being uncooperative):
http://tinyurl.com/29sxtpx
From that Paris Review interview:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3228/the-art-of-fiction-no-66-donald-barthelme
A D
The unforgettable opening to Sabatini’s SCARAMOUCHE: “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.” A lot of Donald Barthelme right there.