This poem - under the title "Library Dreaming: Wallace Stevens Meets the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang" - is now available in the freely downloadable anthology The Ultimate Reader of Love for the Book: An Anthology of Writers Deeply Concerned about Massive Book Disposals occurring at the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (the wellsprings of knowledge). Ed. William (Bill) Direen. ISSN 1953-1427. NZ: Phantom Billstickers, 2021: 34.
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Wallace Stevens: Saved by Florida Cowboys (1931)
Let be be finale of seem
– 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream'
Who’s to say it couldn’t have happened?
the young Wallace Stevens
born in 1879
in Reading, Pennsylvania
might well have travelled out west
sometime before going to Harvard
in the Fall of ’97
It wasn’t till 1896
on his release
from Wyoming State Prison
that Butch Cassidy
put together the Wild Bunch
(Stevens was 17)
The Wild Bunch (Fort Worth, Texas, 1900)
l-to-r: : Harry A. Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid; Will Carver; Ben Kilpatrick, aka the Tall Texan; Harvey Logan, aka Kid Curry; & Robert Leroy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy.
It wasn’t till 1901
that he and Etta Place & the Sundance Kid
left for South America
(Stevens was 22)
It wasn’t till 1908
he was shot down
in San Vicente, Bolivia
(Stevens was 29)
It wasn’t till 1916
that he moved to Hartford
becoming Vice President
of the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Company
in 1934
