AG: “Delight in Disorder” is a very famous poem (on page two seven four). I think underneath there’s a little S & M shot there.
“A sweet disorder in the dress/Kindles in clothes a wantonness:—/A lawn about the shoulders thrown/Into a fine distrac-ti-ón,”— (he wants that eight syllables, this is eight syllables – because the only way he’s going to make that “distraction”, he has to make a couple of marks on it – “Into a..” . – “into a fine distrac-ti-ón” ,[Allen emphasizes the beat] – he’s got eight out of that.
Student: Is that a word, though?
AG: “Distraction” – just the way he stretches it, he just stretches it, it’s stretched – to make the sound..Spanish or something? French? – “Diz-trak-ci-on!”
So a lot about the shoulders thrown into a fine distraction would be just as jazzy, because, you know..
“An erring lace, which here and there/Enthrals the crimson stomacher” – (It’s like, between.. when they had bodices that they sewed up, (he says), and there might be a bright crimson colored piece of cloth over the breast with, what do you call it? – a leather bodice on top) – “A cuff neglectful, and thereby /Ribbands to flow confusedly,— /A winning wave, deserving note,/ In the tempestuous petticoat,/A careless shoe-string, in whose tie/ I see a wild civility,—/ Do more bewitch me, than when art/Is too precise in every part.” – (So that’s why he threw in the..that ‘dis-trac-ci-on”, “a wild civility”. So that phrase, “a wild civility”, has been a hallmark of gentility and wit and intelligence and a slight drunken wildness underneath respectable exterior for centuries. – a “wild civility”,
{Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-six-and=a-quarter minutes in and concluding at fifty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in]