I’m unable to answer for the entirety of British university courses, but can respond in respect of those offered at my own institution, and those few with which I’m familiar through my work as an external examiner. I don’t think it would be true to say that Whitman and Stevens are considered “poetic equals,” but, instead, that Whitman outranks Stevens, as a poet considered seminal to an understanding of American poetry, in a way that Stevens, with his difficult quirkiness, is not. Stevens, that is to say, is an acquired taste, whereas Whitman is a taste you are obliged to acquire— as even Ezra Pound acknowledged when admitting he and Whitman had “one sap and one root” (in his poem “A Pact” [97]). Pound hadn’t anything like the same fellow feeling toward Stevens, who provoked him to a multiplicity of question marks rather than a recognition of connection. That represents my estimate of the general situation. To speak more personally, I regard Stevens as the jewel in the crown of twentieth-century American poetry (omitting transnationals like Eliot and Auden). I can re-read Stevens and discover “fresh transfigurings” (CPP 85) more readily than I can with Whitman, as it happens. The former seems inexhaustible, whereas the latter is on occasions exhausting (often by design).

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英国的惠特曼和史蒂文斯：一些个人反思

我无法回答英国大学的全部课程，但可以回答我所在机构提供的课程，以及我通过担任外部考官而熟悉的少数课程。我认为说惠特曼和史蒂文斯被认为是“诗意平等”是不正确的，但相反，惠特曼超越史蒂文斯，作为一位被认为对理解美国诗歌具有开创性意义的诗人，史蒂文斯在他的怪癖，不是。也就是说，史蒂文斯是一种后天习得的品味，而惠特曼则是一种你必须获得的品味——就连埃兹拉·庞德（Ezra Pound）在承认他和惠特曼有“一个汁液和一个根源”时也承认这一点（在他的诗“契约”中[ 97]）。庞德对史蒂文斯完全没有那种感觉，谁激起了他的多重问号，而不是对联系的认识。这代表了我对一般情况的估计。更个人地说，我认为史蒂文斯是 20 世纪美国诗歌皇冠上的宝石（省略了像艾略特和奥登这样的跨国诗歌）。我可以重读史蒂文斯并发现“新鲜变形”（CPP 85），而不是惠特曼，因为它发生了。前者似乎取之不尽，而后者有时令人筋疲力尽（通常是有意为之）。