Wallace Stevens begins his poem,“The Pleasures of Merely Circulating,” with delicious
nonsense:“The garden flew round with the angel,/The angel flew round with the clouds,/And
the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round/And the clouds flew round with the clouds.”
But I want to exit from these giddy circles and come down to earth, asking the reader to join
me on a journey less certain of its plea sures. Come down, then; let us run the length of this
field, sallying back and forth between two illmatched citations: the first an inviting statement …