Friday, February 05, 2010

atomic anxiety in poem?

Years ago I reviewed a book by Charles Berger called Forms of Farewell which argued, in part, that "The Auroras of Autumn" (Wallace Stevens' late poem) was about fears of nuclear annihilation. I re-discovered an offprint of the review recently and here it is (PDF). I'd always thought the poem was about the not-aboutness of the aurora borealis.