The Man with the Blue Guitar

[Virgil]

Quasimodo and I are up for discussing Wallace Stevens's poem "The Man with the Blue Guitar." It's a rather long poem and unfortunately you can't get the whole thing off the internet since it's copyright has not expired yet. But we'll try to supplement with quotes when we can. The poem divides into 32 sections. I'm not sure whether there is a natural order to the sections. I think most of the poem works in a theme and variations form from classical music, if you are familiar with that. It's a really enjoyable read, not one of those dense Stevens poems that scare many. I think in this poem Stevens is capturing the music of the English language, or perhaps more accurately the American version of the English language, since Stevens was very conscious of the distinctions. Would love to see others participate.

First, the poem is actually inspired by Pablo Picasso's painting by the same name.



So the poem is reflecting on the painting and then also speaking from the painting. Here are the first four sections of the poem open for discussion.

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

II

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero'd head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

III

Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,

To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,

To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,

To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,

To bang it from a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings…

IV

So that's life, then: things are they are?
It picks its way on the blue guitar.

A million people on one string?
And all their manner in the thing,

And all their manner, right and wrong,
And all their manner, weak and strong?

The feelings crazily, craftily call,
Like a buzzing of flies in autumn air,

And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.

[quasimodo1]

For Stevens, especially in this poem, imagination and reality are inextricably linked. The constant refrain in Blue Guitar is "things as they are". In Stevens' own words about some parts of this poem... "This group deals with the incessant conjunctions between things as they are and things imagined. Although the blue guitar is a symbol of the imagination, it is used more often simply as reference to the individuality of the poet, meaning to the poet any man of imagination."

[JBI]

Long poem - lets see if I can dig it up online, because I don't have a copy of Stevens (unfortunately) on me. I may post a little on it later, but I'm hoping to get some stuff on Avison down on the discussion thread.

The poem is very Walt Whitmanny, in many ways. Notably with all the repetition of grammar and sound, and in playing with the transformative spirit through the artwork.

The color blue though, what should we make of it? I'm of the mind that it gestures both to Picasso, but at the same time, to the subconscious. I think, by the Guitar being blue, Stevens is suggesting that there is an under layer within the artwork itself, imbued with a subconscious, transformative quality, that, using the instrument as a metaphor for the poem, changes all the listeners.

Quasi though, I don't think I can particularly agree with your summary of the guitar as the capturing of the poet, I think Stevens seperates the poem from the poet; the guitar, not the poet is blue - it doesn't gesture to Stevens, as Wordsworth would have gestured to himself; instead, the poem is the colorful, and the poet is the gray, the bland.

In that sense, this stanza:

The vivid, florid, turgid sky,
The drenching thunder rolling by,

The morning deluged still by night,
The clouds tumultuously bright

And the feeling heavy in cold chords
Struggling toward impassioned choirs,

Crying among the clouds, enraged
By gold antagonists in air--

I know my lazy, leaden twang
Is like the reason in a storm;

And yet it brings the storm to bear.
I twang it out and leave it there.

is made to be all the more profound: it is not the poet, but the poem which is the storm, the guitar has all the power, as it captures everything around it in a torrent of blue, yet the artist, Stevens, the guitar player, is absent, or

Is a form, described but difficult,
And I am merely a shadow hunched

Above the arrowy, still string,
The maker of a thing yet to be made;

The color like a thought that grows
Out of a mood, the tragic robe

Of the actor, half his gesture, half
His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk

Sodden with his melancholy words,
The weather of his stage, himself.

[Virgil]

For Stevens, especially in this poem, imagination and reality are inextricably linked. The constant refrain in Blue Guitar is "things as they are". In Stevens' own words about some parts of this poem... "This group deals with the incessant conjunctions between things as they are and things imagined. Although the blue guitar is a symbol of the imagination, it is used more often simply as reference to the individuality of the poet, meaning to the poet any man of imagination."

Thanks for that Stevens' quote. It does put the poem into perspective.

Long poem - lets see if I can dig it up online, because I don't have a copy of Stevens (unfortunately) on me. I may post a little on it later, but I'm hoping to get some stuff on Avison down on the discussion thread.

If you do, please let me know about it. I couldn't find it.

[JBI]

Thanks for that Stevens' quote. It does put the poem into perspective.


If you do, please let me know about it. I couldn't find it.

http://www.geegaw.com/stories/the_ma...e_guitar.shtml

[Virgil]

http://www.geegaw.com/stories/the_ma...e_guitar.shtml

Holy smoke you did it!! Four bananas for you.

[quasimodo1]

I have misplaced the attribution of this quote but it helps in getting an overview of Blue Guitar... "The Man with the Blue Guitar is a serial poem by Wallace Stevens. Its subject is the subject of much of Stevens'

work: Creativity, specifically Poetic Creativity.
To many this may seem an esoteric topic, and worth little consideration. An impractical pursuit, worthy only of

wastrels, or those too cowardly to face the world. Yet, Wallace Stevens rose to senior positions in an insurance

company--no small task for a wastrel, or coward. And to great accolades for both his poetry, and his thought.

He was a man to whom questions of creativity were not limited to the abstract, nor to some small part of his life--it

dominated all his life. The whole of harmonium was the goal he set for his work. This he never realized, never could

realize. It could only ever be a work in progress.

The Man with the Blue Guitar can be considered notes he set down, notes to himself, that he shares with us, on his

lifelong inquiry. They are composed in a kind of shorthand, that of a great intellect, and a great sensitive to the

world in which "The blue guitar/And I are one."

[Virgil]

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

There's a few things I see in the first stanza that seems to carry through the poem. First there the couplets that rhyme and those that don't. Second there are the lines that lyrically flow and the lines that don't. Look at that first opening couplet. It's quite unususal when you compare it with the other couplets:

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

No end rhyme, no flowing lyricism. Two end stops in the second line.

It seems to me that when the words are describing objective reality, the lyricism stops. It seems to me, and I haven't read the poem through so I may change my mind later, that when Stevens is in a realism mode, the poeticism rings discordant, and when he's in the subjective mode of the imagination, the lines ring with concordance.

Third, interesting the very first color mentioned is not blue, but green. What does it mean for a day to be green? If the guitar is blue, and that stands for imagination, what does green stand for? I think we'll have to come to some sort of conclusion on the color scheme. Colors in Stevens tend to confuse me. I wonder how consistent he is with them.

Fourth, what a term for a guitar player, "shearsman." That's not even a craftsman. Intuitively one makes the anaology of an artist to a craftsman, a pottery maker, a gilded plate maker, a jewelry maker, something of high craft. A shearesman is raw cutting, just hand function, not even really requiring any level of skill. This is the hardest of reality, the bottom of a skilled hierarchy.

Fifth, there is the dichotomy of the "they" and the man playing the guitar, which in essence is a triangle when you consider the narrative voice. They is a communal group, he an individual, and the poet's voice a omniscient presence. The three create an interesting tension, and really brings out the relationship of art from all perspectives. The tension is brought out immediately when the community voice ("they") complain that what comes from the guitar is not what they see:

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

Sixth, there are the aspects of what art is. Is it a reflection of reality, or a new alternative reality? What the community asks for is something that they can understand, something that resonates to their vision of reality:

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

[Il Penseroso]

Fifth, there is the dichotomy of the "they" and the man playing the guitar, which in essence is a triangle when you consider the narrative voice. They is a communal group, he an individual, and the poet's voice a omniscient presence. The three create an interesting tension, and really brings out the relationship of art from all perspectives. The tension is brought out immediately when the community voice ("they") complain that what comes from the guitar is not what they see:

Sixth, there are the aspects of what art is. Is it a reflection of reality, or a new alternative reality? What the community asks for is something that they can understand, something that resonates to their vision of reality:

It's been awhile since I've read this, but I remember these themes Virgil brings up (particularly the tension between audience and artist) as key, and confusing, particularly as the poem develops and the character voices (which in the first section are separated from the "inner voice" of the poet by quotation marks) become less easily identifiable (or impossible to distinguish).

The line "The day was green" I think is also interesting, as Virgil mentions. I think the obvious correlation to nature here isn't too far off, as the audience folk appear remarkably ill-adapted in their conceptions of the natural world (they wish for a flattened earth).

I'll try to give it a reread and come back with more detailed impressions.

[Quark]

Quasimodo and I are up for discussing Wallace Stevens's poem "The Man with the Blue Guitar."

Good idea, Virgil. It's a poem worth discussing, but has the conversation fizzled?

[Virgil]

Good idea, Virgil. It's a poem worth discussing, but has the conversation fizzled?

No, I'll continue tonight. I guess Quasi hasn't been around lately.

[Quark]

No, I'll continue tonight.

Oh, good news. I'll go to the library and get the poems. Wait:

http://www.geegaw.com/stories/the_ma...e_guitar.shtml

JBI is always one step ahead.

[mortalterror]

That was an interesting poem, and not at all tedious. But I'm more interested in Steven's as an example of the late bloomer than as an artist. We have many enfant terrible's but few masters who take up the pen late in life. I believe Bloom once compared him to Sophocles in this respect.

I was just looking over his biography, and apparently he quarreled with both Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway: two authors I have a tremendous respect for. I know that it is popular to compare the nature of Steven's work with T.S. Eliot's but beyond the surface difficulties I see little similarity. I'm not sure that I'd even place him in the category of major poets despite his jars, blackbirds, and icecreams. He has not the immediacy of say Baudelaire, or even the shocking novelty of Rimbaud. He's obscure without being intellectual; so I wouldn't put him in the same class as Petrarch. His work is not imitative like Dante or Ovid's. Stevens reminds me of Ferlinghetti more than he does other powerhouses of the twentieth century such as Pessoa or Rilke. That said, I'd have no trouble placing him in the middle of the pack with the likes of William Carlos Williams and E.E. Cummings.

[Virgil]

I'm sorry Mortal, you obviously don't understand Stevens. Bloom puts him at the top 20th century American poet, ahead of Eliot and Pound and all the modernists.

[mortalterror]

I'm sorry Mortal, you obviously don't understand Stevens. Bloom puts him at the top 20th century American poet, ahead of Eliot and Pound and all the modernists.

Yes, well...Bloom says a lot of things. The old wax monument's been wrong so many times it doesn't serve to count them anymore. It probably doesn't hurt that he knew Stevens and liked him at a time when he was very young and susceptible to such influences. Bloom mentions several places that Stevens is his favorite writer and how are we supposed to be objective about our champions? Besides, Bloom is an ambassador of a certain kind of academic view. Once you know his biases, stances, and leanings, how fond he is of Whitman for instance; his preferment of Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens seems only natural, if somewhat less credible.