Lapsed Catholic TKO’s (possible) Deathbed Conversion in One Round

All Kay, sew Poopoo Hummingbird wund them-that-there-istocles boor-niggled fitch agoniste dat “Books Cunty Brooler” – bart youse atlier fixtionists borst knobby gittin only idrears abbot cumin arp in pippin eeny arf ooze poots inder nooses!

Webe poutin thar goost arf Ezzy Pint ayn youse arses – under goot!

– Jujube

Comments

  1. Rufus McCain says

    Thanks JOB. Fabulous.

  2. Jonathan Webb says

    Hemingway was a non-contributer to society. I'm reading "The Sun Also Rises" and not especially enjoying it. And I don't like what I know about the bully Hemingway and would enjoy fucking him up.

    Stevens was a producer, as a business executive and as a poet. Too bad he isn't the role model for all these useless young bohemians instead of Hemingway.

  3. Rufus McCain says

    Then of course there's this lil ditty by e.e. cummings:

    what does little Ernest croon
    in his death at afternoon?
    (kow dow r 2 bul retoinis
    wus de woids uf lil Oinis

  4. Rufus McCain says

    It's been awhile since I read it, but I liked The Sun Also Rises. Seems to me it is one of Lickona's formative reads and rereads, too. Right, Matthew?

  5. Rufus McCain says

    I also read, while standing in a bookstore many years ago, the account of Stevens' deathbed conversion. A beautiful thing. Stevens and Eliot were both upstanding citizens. I love the story about the guy who worked with Stevens for many years and had no idea he was a poet.

  6. There's a neat symmetry that Denis Donoghue (if you haven't, read him – he's a critic's critic, and actually LOVES literature more than the gaze-path to his navel like so many moderne critiques) lays out in his book on Eliot "Words Alone":

    T.S. Eliot: Ezra Pound:: Wallace Stevens: William Carlos Williams

    in terms of the relationship of expatrial influences vs homegrown (although WS and WCW both made brief visits to Europe, neither was impressed enough to stay).

    But:

    T.S.E: WS::EP:WCW

    In terms of style – the former poets of "ideas" the latter poets of "things."

    (There's also a relationship here between the Harvardians on one side of the divide and the Penn Staters on the other, coincidentally enough.)

    I'd like to make some hay about the professional status of Eliot and Stevens – but Williams was a pediatric doctor, so he too was gainfully employed.

    And Ezra Pound also is the only major poet who comes from Idaho – far as I know.

    And one more coincidence for the road: both Eliot and Stevens had wives who suffered from mental illness.

    And yes, Mrs. O'Brien is perfectly sane….

    JOB

  7. Jonathan Webb says

    Thanks Rufus. Great post.

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