When Wallace Stevens wrote: “The world is ugly and the people are sad” he was speaking in a specialized tense, “The Stevensian pluperfect” on behalf of an ordinary evening in New Haven.
The phrase, at once autocratic and abstract sounds right. But let’s contrast Stevens’ lines with these by Greg Brown, a folk singer from Iowa City: “The world ain’t what you think it is/ it’s just what it is.” One way to understand the difference between these two sensibilities is to say that Mr. Greg Brown has had his heart broken by local girls: (he grew up on a strawberry farm) while Wallace Stevens broke his heart on Schopenhauer, a matter that did not necessitate leaving his room. The difference matters since what we call “the local” in American literature is inexhaustible and organic and its words don’t spring from a vacuum. In other words: all human losses are local and are balanced by recoveries which occur in real fields and strawberry patches. This takes work, whether we’re talking about the psychiatrist’s couch or rebuilding your barn.
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Greg Brown is a true American poet. I remember first hearing him in a live concert at a small venue 20 years ago, and being blown away. It's been a joy ever since to watch his star continue to rise.
Posted by: Lisa Simeone | Monday, January 03, 2011 at 08:05 AM