Poetry trivia
I’ve been reading a rather strange and difficult book, The Sea by Irish writer, John Banville. As you follow the fractured progress of the plot, moving back and forth through several time periods as it does, the one thing that quickly becomes apparent is the brilliant, unique, obsessive style of his prose. At once lush and, as another reviewer put it, pungent, he strings his words along like a spider does a web, around and around each other and the narrator, characters and reader, until all are caught alike in this predicament we call life.
Getting to my point, one of his many obscure references was to the “Bard of Hartford.” Once having lived in that fair city, I was immediately intrigued but not sure who it was. Any takers? (No fair googling, although even that doesn’t get you too far at first). For the answer:
Okay, it’s Wallace Stevens. Of course, we’ve heard of him, and I do remember reading The Emperor of Ice Cream in college, but I didn’t know he was an insurance exec who wrote poetry on the side. I read through some of his poems and can understand why Banville might feel an affinity: the slippery, twisting imagery, the odd slant of meaning, the difficult, obdurate language. Both authors reward close, careful reading. Maybe I should read The Sea again with more care….