rejectomorph

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All day yesterday the valley was covered by a dense layer of cloud, as were the mountains. The foothill ridges between them were drenched in sunlight. It is a common weather pattern here. In the evening, I went out and watched the clouds in the valley rise up and spread toward the mountain clouds, and the ridge entered a blue dusk filled with light mist. All night, the trees dripped moisture. Now, grey morning is blurry with fog. There is a good chance it will rain today. I'm sorry I have to go to sleep. It would be nice to go for a long walk in this foggy air.

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From:

aaulino.livejournal.com

Congratulations on the being the other person on livejournal with pierre reverdy as an interest.

I like walking in the fog. Lord knows we get enough of it around here.

From:

rejectomorph

Thanks.

I hadn't checked my interests for quite a while so hadn't noticed that Reverdy had formed a link. One by one, all my unlinked interests are linking. Still, I'm surprised that it took this long for anyone else to list Reverdy. (Although the biggest surprise is that nobody else has yet listed Richard Wilbur. He's better known than Reverdy, or even Yvor Winters, who is linked.)

From:

aaulino.livejournal.com

I'm thinking of adding 'agoraphobia' as an interest, as well. How long have you been with agoraphobia?

I can't say I know Yvor Winters other than through his acadmic relation to Robert Pinksy, but I definitely prefer Reverdy to Wilbur. It could be a language thing(obvious, probably, looking at my interest list), but I've always been loved how disorienting even a lot of his familiar imagery(walls, plants) comes though(at least when I read him)

From:

rejectomorph

The first full-blown panic attack I had occurred whan I was 13 years old. I didn't find out what it was for years, and concealed it from everyone, since I was convinced that they would have me locked up if they knew about it. Eventually I got into a program that helped me deal with it. I still have a higher level of anxiety than most people, but it doesn't interfere with my life to the extent that it once did.

Winters is an interesting poet. His earliest work is quite similar to Reverdy's, though more manic- even a bit unstable. He eventually abandoned the style (He came to call it "the deliberate courting of madness,") and became much more of a traditionalist, though the influence of his early experimentalism continued to show throughout his career.

I have to admit that I know Reverdy only in translation, since I have no French. My favorite translations are those of Kenneth Rexroth. In fact, the quote from Winters I used above is from Rexroth's introduction to his New Directions paperback of translations of Reverdy. But, you are right: Reverdy does create a sense of disorientation, making the most commonplace objects and events seem like something in a very gripping and evocative dream.

Wilbur is indeed a more conservative poet than Reverdy, and it took me a while to develop an interest in his work. I don't think he has the depth of a Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams, but his disciplined work does have pleasures of its own. And, at moments, his images do have some of that sense of lifting free of the everyday world that is characteristic of more adventurous poets.