(Sonnet as Keynote to WS)
The stout man puffs on his Havana cigar
And picks canary chords on his blue guitar,
Fashions flawed words and spindrift sounds
Into day-glow verbs and glass-blown nouns.
How much the notion of a supreme fiction
Derives from bric-a-brac and spiffy diction
None knows. Say his thickest absolutes
Derive from blue rotundities of fruits:
His crispest jugglery performs the feat
Of hardening stealthy points into concrete
Trombones, sausage-makers, cattle skulls,
And pettifogging buds. His monocle's
Univocal, a prop that lets him see
Glories in pewter, and mere poetry.
(Published in The Wallace Stevens Journal, Fall 2005. Vol.29. No.2 p.304)
William F Dougherty
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wallace-stevens-the-click-of-marbled-orbs/
