Friday, October 5, 2007

This is a facile exercise

To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat

Not to be too "all work and no play..." about this, but why can't I memorize things? All I want is to hold onto one little phrase from "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction."

To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat

...even if it's a possibility of populist rhetoric that Stevens offers, only to snatch it back in a cuttingly brusque manner. "This is a facile exercise." The jeremiad, in Stevens, is a false basis of consensus. And yet

To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat
To exult with its great throat

Whatever. "These are not things transformed./ Yet we are shaken by them as if they were./ We reason about them with a later reason." Sometimes you just need to type the words.