During this imitation of Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Planet on the Table” I began to toy with the antithesis of the character Stevens created. His speaker is writing the poem of the world and is one with the sun; my character is far from this. I have created an author that is cut from a cloth like many others—those trying to achieve the status of Stevens’ poet, but quickly and for the wrong reasons. I think that now the role of writing to quell the qualms of the world is less of a traveled path and I feel that Eugene is a prime example of somebody writing for a paycheck or fame, all the while letting the ‘ripe shrub wither.’
A Table for a Wallydrag
Eugene had stapled his manuscript neatly.
The words were carefully selected this time
or at least came close to that effect.
His earlier stories of his youth
seemed shitty and slipshod
and the allusions struggled.
His life and his pen were two
and these words, also about his youth,
were no less sucky than before.
He knew they would not endure.
All he cared was that his words would
make some increment of
some almighty dollar, if only a half-pence,
to feed the hunger of his ego,
but not the planet he didn’t know.