Forty

Stevens points out the speaker's age of 40 twice in Le Monocle de Mon Oncle (sections VI and IX). The poem as mid-life crisis! A crisis poem of loss of sexual potency and the realization that even that humiliation is mere precursor to the horrible fact of death. "For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke/Ticks tediously the time of one more year."

This is sex and poetry wrapped in death and it's probably my favorite poem so far. And as I'm 40, that makes some sense.

I realized some time ago that I stopped liking (so intensely) Strand's poems because he "aged" beyond me in his work...as I grow older I imagine I will start liking him as much again.

More to come on Le Monocle...