For fear of forgetting...

(another attempt for a picture with no luck)

I really had no fear of forgetting to try and attach pictures, but I did have a fear of forgetting to finish the Wallace Stevens poem my friend Dave asked me to read, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." While I read the first part of this three part poem several weeks ago (feel free to scroll through the archives to find the mention if you feel the desire), I never wrote my impressions of part two, nor did I finish part three. Now I can say I need to read the whole thing again, though I am more than a bit confident the answer to what this poem is about lies in Aristotle, rather than navel gazing. If it is supposed to be "Poem as Manifesto" then I don't believe it worked, at least for those with an average level of erudition. For Aristotle, and I studied this particular bit of knowledge more than 15 years ago and haven't had call for it until now, I seem to remember that he believed the Epic poem one of the highest, if not the highest, form of art. Stevens in the final stanzas begins calling on soldiers, which ties him ever so nicely back to Homer' Illiad, which ties back to Phoebus. I don't know if I will reread this any time soon. I read it for Dave, and here I am giving him the feedback he asked for, perhaps not as precise as he would like, but feedback nevertheless, but I have books to read, that will otherwise just sit on my shelves collecting dust.