[New-Poetry] Aphorisms

[Robin Hamilton]

<<
Not really.  There must be 13,000 ways of looking at a blackbird, and 
another 130,000 of ways to avoid looking at a blackbird.

- Jim
>>

Of course.

But there are far fewer ways of doing it if you are the Vice-President of 
the Hartford Accident and Indemnity and Insurance Society, and want to 
simultaneously send up Imagism, and platitudes.

        {Ouch -- Stevens had a viscious sense of humour, both before and 
after Harmonium.}

Maybe Pound did it earlier, and more succinctly, in:

            Spring ...
            Too long ...
            Gongora ...

... but Stevens (takes one to know one, and he had a lethal attraction to 
apothegrams) put his finger on the spot in Dat Blackbird.

Lots of commentary, but only thirteen blackbrides ...

R.

*********************


On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Robin Hamilton 
<robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:

13 Ways of Looking At A Blackbird -- pretty much formally defines this 
genre.

The rest is recycle.

(And Stevens separated his commonplace book aphorisms from the Blackbird.)

R.