"Pick a subject, anyway: daffodils. Look, the daffodils are out. The forsythia's out, too, and the sulangeana is opening its buds. 'Daffodil' will probably always seem sillier than the flower it names. Because of (a) Daffy Dill and (b) Willie Wordsworth and the gushiness that's stuck to the subjects he wrote about. My own history is involved here. I think I was fussed over...for so loving 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' when I was eleven or so. At the time this could only mean yet another distancing from the Real Boys. I'd always excepted the poem from the Wordsworth-I-Don't-Like, but when I think about it now it sounds typically silly: 'lonely as a cloud'? 'Continuous as the stars that shine' is a haunting verse; but even if the basis of the simile is continuity, t compare wobbly daffodils to invisibly moving stars is like comparing white bunny tails to snowy mountain peaks. So let's do that." (Harry Mathews: from, 20 Lines a Day)
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