Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Self-Control and Maturity in Action

I am very used to people being wrong on the Internet, but to misattribute the poem "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" to e.e. cummings instead of Wallace Stevens --- that's just really wrong.  And it is, I believe, just about the only assertion in that entire thread that nobody took issue with (and somebody even "liked" it).  Of course, I'm sure no other readers were their state American literature champion in high school or, like me, they are just mature and self-regulating enough to avoid pointing out the error.  But on my own blog, I have no compunction about obnoxiously observing that making a sort of demonstrative, gratuitous literary allusion but fucking it up = signaling FAIL. 

I really like Wallace Stevens' poetry and find it kind of inspiring that he published the majority of his work rather late in life (his first major publication was at age 35) and while holding down a demanding full-time job as a lawyer (and later, a VP) for the Hartford insurance company. 

No comments: