Week 7
Walking clears head for muse to enter
Hartford Connecticut was home to Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, and poet Wallace Stevens, who lived there from 1916 to his death in
1955. Stevens is proof that to be an artist one does not have to give up the
middle class life; he worked as a claims lawyer for a Hartford insurance
company and wrote poems in his spare time. He turned down opportunities to
teach poetry, instead preferring his alternative life as insurance man. He
never learned to drive and walked the 2.4 miles to and from work every day,
composing poems in his head as he walked and writing them down when he got there..
The time spent walking the familiar path was time for the muse to work within
him. Today the thought of doing this seems to be totally in opposition to how
most of us live our lives these days and even to how we create art. We drive. We
use electronic devices. We do both at the same time. We are never unoccupied. I
am guilty of this too even though I know that when I am walking, thoughts do
enter my head that I might not have otherwise had and problems resolve
themselves without my having to consciously work on them. Solutions just come. This
is why it has been very hard for me the past months when I have not been able
to walk without discomfort. Walking is time for my mind to clear. I have missed
it.
Below is a Stevens poem with which I am familiar. It is
dense stuff. Having a traditional job does not mean that one can’t be a weird
artist too.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
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Call the roller
of big cigars,
The muscular one,
and bid him whip
In kitchen cups
concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches
dawdle in such dress
As they are used
to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in
last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale
of seem.
The only emperor
is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the
dresser of deal,
Lacking the three
glass knobs, that sheet
On which she
embroidered fantails once
And spread it so
as to cover her face.
If her horny feet
protrude, they come
To show how cold
she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp
affix its beam.
The only emperor
is the emperor of ice-cream.
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