Two or Three Ideas

Notes:
He's saying that there are two types of poets, the ones who just think, go, and scribe and there are those who are timorous with words, in that, "If one keeps in mind the fact that most poets who have something to say are content with what they say and that most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it"
This gets me thinking about the film Finding Forrester (I highly recommend it) where a young, brilliant, high school student and aspiring writer befriends an older well-renowned recluse novelist who together give each other input on how to  write well. What young Jamal learns from old William in the movie is how to create his style.
Just sit and go. Don't think too deeply (at first) because that step comes after you actually have something written down. I'll find for y'all that specific scene.

"Style is not something applied. It is something inherent, something that permeates."

But style is not something that is easy to grasp. It's about trial and error and built with heuristic practice.
Ain't it a coincidence that Jamal the student's last name is Wallace, too. Hmm..

Then, from this movie, I get thinking about inner-city life in New York.
"It is their style that makes them gods, not merely privileged beings."
This quote and that film get me thinking on a tangent about a different breed of poetry, rap music, specifically Wu-Tang Clan and Busta Rhymes because these rappers curiously enough call others "God," referring to themselves or others outside the music, in their lyrics as if they're extraordinary individuals, but what's really going on is their complementing one another, or not [depending on the rap's target audience]. But it's true that their style is inherent, but they're not naturally gifted in public communication. They needed training and polishing.
For more style points see page 844.
"The unity of style and the poem itself is a unity of language and life that exposes both in a supreme sense."
Funny how supremacy is commonly brought up, and while I'm on rapper I might as well inform everyone of these specific groups religious affiliation, a sect off the Nation of Islam called "The Nation of Gods and Earths". Some of their most important teachings are called, coincidentally, the "Supreme Alphabet" and "Supreme Mathematics." Take a look further if you're interested here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation_of_Gods_and_Earths
Anywho, got kind of sidetracked, but here are some quotes from Stevens that can speak for themselves:
"we think of Jove, while we take him for granted as the symbol of omnipotence"
"The people, not the priests, made the gods."

"One of the irrelevancies is the romantic...It can be said of the romantic, just as it can be said of the imagination, that it can never effectively touch the same thing twice in the same way."
"A poem is a restricted creation of the imagination. The gods are the creation of the [accumulation of] imagination at it utmost."


And finally this is the quote that caught my attention because it almost downplays the art of literary studies because, naturally, people cannot be fully satisfied by, say, one be-all, end-all heroic poem [which Stevens talks about in The Figure of Youth...]
"By detached, I mean the unsuccessful, the ineffective, the arbitrary, the literary, the non-umbilical, that which in its high degree would still be words."
Ain't that unusual to think of our studies as ineffective and arbitrary and all of the above [especially literary], but maybe that's not what he means and what I'm saying is a mere misread.