Wallace Stevens

 Wallace Stevens, the intellectual deep thinking American poet had early interest in writing poetry, but achieved success and fame only later in middle age. His great poetry was composed after many years as a lawyer and as vice-president of a prestigious insurance company. The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was awarded him just before he died at age 75. 

    Often, the meaning and philosophy behind his poems are obscure and difficult to decipher. There is confusion and there are varying theories about what he means by,

“supreme fiction”, “death is the mother of beauty” and a “blue guitar”. Certainly, he was anti religion if its main focus stressed a spiritual afterlife.

             What is divinity if it can come

             Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

There is no reality, just imagination he explains. Though his imaginative constructs can run wild, stay with his poems and get carried along on the ride. Stick with him

because there are many poems of elegant simplicity and delight.

        I measure myself

        Against a tall tree

        I find that I am much taller

       For I reach right up to the sun

       With my eye;

       And I reach to the shore of the sea

       With my ear.

       Nevertheless, I dislike

       The way the ants crawl

       In and out of my shadow.     

   The martini is quintessentially American, though gin has its origin in the Middle Ages. According to H. L. Mencken this cocktail is “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet”. Stevens liked his cocktails and probably after one too many, argued with and alienated Robert Frost. In Key West he reportedly broke his hand

in a fight with Hemingway and got knocked into the street.  They never reconciled.

     To continue reading his works, I recommend a relaxing sip of the highest quality gin martini stirred or shaken on ice to cool any reactive volcanic emotions.

Elliot O. Lipchik

W.B. Yeats

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I stumble as if drunk when I read Yeats. I become uncertain, perhaps confused of my knowledge and beliefs. He buffets me as in a wind storm. Unsteady, I must sit, re-gather my wits. Drink, not necessary, my mind already addled as if I “had one too many”. I name him the great enchanter.  His spirituality and imagination rooted in the agricultural, idyllic, mythical past of Ireland are applicable to all people of all countries.

No other poet plunged so deeply into themes of life and death, love and hate and
all the conundrums of man’s condition. He says all with magnetic imagination and power and often song-like rhythms propelling the reader deeper and deeper into the confusion of life.

He pined for the heroic past age. Life never fulfills its promises and dreams. He abhorred withering old age yet accepted mortality and always insisted on the power of the word and the imagination. Although he often wrote of erotic love and beauty, and his belief in mystical symbolism, he could be funny, physical and anti clerical as in his “Crazy Jane” poems. He was touched by and touches us all with “faerie” dust.

     “Wine comes in at the mouth

     And love comes in at the eye

     That’s all we shall know for truth

     Before we grow old and die”

-Elliot O. Lipchik

ROBERT LEE FROST,

   the most quoted and quotable poet in American literature.  Who in America is not familiar with:

       “….and miles to go before I sleep”

       “The Road Not Taken”  

       the poem, “The Gift Outright” read at JFK’s inauguration 

       “Good fences make good neighbors”?

If not recognized, that person must be living on another planet.

     Frost’s personal life was plagued with grief and loss; an alcoholic father, mental illness in the immediate family, deaths of several young children. He, his wife and mother all suffered from depressive episodes. His epitaph: “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world”. 

   Most of his poetry stays clear of religion and politics. He writes of men alone in an indifferent universe. Yet, he uses metaphors of nature to illustrate man’s condition. With much ironic humor and conversational language describing ordinary situations such as walking along a country road and rural life settings, complex social and philosophical themes are explored.

   I believe he did not drink alcohol, but did write a poem about cider, “In A Glass of Cider”.  Therefore, I toast him with both a glass of cider and clear, cool water drawn

from a well on a New England farm.

Elliot O. Lipchik

The Range of a Poet's Focus


Some poets' eyes are trained on their community, city, state, on their life experiences on a farm, in the northwoods or their respective family experiences, and, as such, those poets are often tagged as a poet of their city, state or region. While I probably secretly wish that I could hang a hook on one of the above, it appears that I simply cannot do so.

As I noted in the preface to my book, The Silent Tango of Dreams, a realization that I have developed over the course of my adult life is that there is no geographic place that I can boast of as my home. Rather, I have come to realize, much like the peripatetic writer, Pico Ayer, that I am really a person of the world, not of any one town, village, city or nation. I have learned that my home is in my heart where my love and the love of others toward me resides, and that, on the scale of things, is what is really important and dear to me. Given my what might be termed my nomadic existence as a child living in different parts of the United States, my subsequent foreign language studies, Peace Corps experiences in Chile, marriage to a woman from the Caribbean, and my numerous travels and stints living abroad, I cannot help but to have an international perspective and respect for other cultures.

I believe that my poems collectively represent, to a large extent, this condition of mine, one that I proudly embrace like a global nationhood in this often confusing though fascinating world of ours. The world has offered me what I regard as an international citizenship, one that my poems fondly embrace.


—Stephen Anderson

FEET OF CLAY

Charles Bukowski was a hero during the anti-establishment era of the 60’s; a time when boozing, drugs and abusive rhetoric were mythologized and sanctified. Anything or anyone against the status quo and the pursuit of wealth was despised. How society has changed!

    “Drink, write and fuck” defined life for Bukowski. He hated rules and regulations, was appalled by Disney and Mickey Mouse for not having souls. He claimed to dislike the human race and considered most people and talk, boring. Freud would have a field day!

   His poetic style was without metaphor, directly self-referral and autobiographical. But, the violence he reports must have been imagined since I suspect he never had the skill or courage or else was too drunk to punch anyone.

   He did have the jealous gall to rail against the “greats”. He preferred to see them suffer: “I like to read about Joyce blind and prowling……G. B. Shaw ….a bore”*

   Stephen Holden called him a “cantankerous misanthrope and professional low life”** who wanted to piss on his competitors. Donald Hall named him a “bogus proletarian”.

         playing it out    

 I keep trying these

 drunk poems

 sitting on this chair

 smoking too many…..

 not understanding anything

 and finally

 not wanting to.

   How shall I fit him into a category of drink and poetry? Is the answer to open a bottle of the cheapest Italian red wine and let it stand in my view as I read and compose?

*The Last Generation, C.B.

**Poetry Foundation Biography

QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN

 

   William Carlos Williams, a quintessential American poet of immigrant mixed nationality parents; born, resided, practiced medicine, and died in a small town in New Jersey.

   How shall we propose a toast to him and with which libation? What can we sip while reading his poetry? Which beverage would help us simplify the contradictory and complex workings of his mind and art?  He probably did not imbibe, but empathized and learned from those who did. With enormous unquenchable energy he delivered babies, practiced pediatrics, listened patiently and sympathetically to those he treated, and wrote prodigiously.

   In contrast to T.S.Eliot, love and imagination were the essence of life for him. He broke with Pound and Eliot insisting they abandoned America in favor of Europe’s old world culture and its morose view of the future.  All Williams’ works were derived from the observations of every day circumstances of the lives of common people.   “……blossoming, thriving, opening, reviving….”*,  were the tenets of  his positive philosophy of the future.

  Thus, we must find a potion, truly, wholly and simply American. Beer comes to mind, if brewed and bottled in New Jersey.  More apropos may be an American original Bourbon or pure backwoods American Moonshine, shockingly and wonderfully raw, but possibly lacking imagination and precision. Both might induce something vivid, Zen-like, providing “images not ideas”.  After a “few” we may grasp his early Cubist restructuring of reality.

   Join me in this plethora of offerings. WCW is worth the exploration.

                                          *In the American Grain, WCW.

Elliot O. Lipchik

Neruda

Pablo Neruda (nee Basoalto) is in my estimation, the greatest poet of the 20^th Century, who has intimate, deep relevance today. Student, teacher, editor, diplomat, politician, myth sayer, Nobelist, and most importantly, humanist.

A fiery poet of leftist politics and love, stirring both body and soul, rebellious against superficial manners and inane social customs which hide nature’s and man’s beauty and justice.

 I toast his myths, imagination and humor. I drink to his understanding of “love” and his language of every day life.

How shall I pair this word genius, this multi dimensional poet with a specific wine? Do I do him justice with the finest champagne, the most carefully constructed cognac, the most elegant and complex Chilean wine?  My words are stifled, drowned by the dramatic, sensual tsunami of his thoughts and talent.

       “I drink to the word, raising

        a word or a shining cup;

        in it I drink

       the pure wine of language……..

       ……cup and water and wine

       give rise to my song”

               from “The Word” by Neruda.

Elliot O. Lipchik