{"id":13391,"date":"2015-10-02T14:12:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T18:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quiltr.com\/?p=13391"},"modified":"2015-10-02T14:12:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T18:12:59","slug":"today-and-today-and-then-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/?p=13391","title":{"rendered":"Today and today and then today"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the Writer’s Almanac<\/a> today is the birthday of Wallace Stevens, and The Emperor of Ice Cream was the poem du jour:<\/p>\n

Let be be finale of seem.
\nThe only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which was great coincidence since I’ve spent the last couple commutes listening to the online yale modern poetry teachers talk about Wallace Stevens. Interesting guy, “the dean of surety-claims men in the whole country” according to an insurance company colleague, one of many who didn’t know what he dictated to his secretary upon arriving at work each morning. In the class, the tale was told that he would walk to work, a couple miles each way, composing as he went. He’d arrive at work, dictate, the secretary would type up that day’s poem or poems and he would put them in a desk drawer for a month. He would pull them out, thirty days the cooler, revise and edit and make whatever he felt good part of the current collection he was working on. The rest went in the wastebasket never to be seen again.<\/p>\n

Good to have a system.<\/p>\n

\nFrom: The Man on the Dump<\/p>\n

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
\nOne beats and beats for that which one believes.
\nThat\u2019s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
\nBe merely oneself, as superior as the ear
\nTo a crow\u2019s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
\nPack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
\nSolace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
\nIs it a philosopher\u2019s honeymoon, one finds
\nOn the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
\nBottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
\nIs it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
\nInvisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
\nThe day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
\nWhere was it one first heard of the truth? The the.<\/p>\n

Wallace Stevens, “The Man on the Dump” from Collected Poems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Writer’s Almanac today is the birthday of Wallace Stevens, and The Emperor of Ice Cream was the poem du jour: Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Which was great … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,13,147],"tags":[202,105],"class_list":["post-13391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-in-the-world","category-do-the-work","category-poetry-and-lyrics","tag-dothework","tag-poetry"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3FVAs-3tZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13392,"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13391\/revisions\/13392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}