Poem of the Week

One thing I can't help but feel from having read a bit of Stevens' poetry is that he has some internal color symbolism that he adheres to. I have never been able to penetrate it.

Check out this exerpt from his "The Man With the Blue Guitar":

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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 to him, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

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

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What does "The day was green" in line two mean?

What I also noticed just right now is that the poem begins with an 'although'--which is another way of saying 'but'--but we aren't given what that 'but' is. From the beginning of the poem to its end the poem seems to remain in a paused or delayed state, with very little movement to it.

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Originally Posted by ktd222

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

Wallace Stevens

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To me, the author is emphasizing the simplicity and almost nothingness that the woman is doing. These are all benign and subtle movements inside a dull or unnotable room. But, it is important to note that the author notices all these tiny details. He knows her heart is beating furiously! Could this be a man and a woman inside a room. They are attracted to each other and there is some sexual tension in the air?? The woman is nervous and her subtle gestures stand out to the man who is watching her intently? "What is all this?" could suggest "Why all the supressed energy? Let's get it on!" Just some thoughts... :brow:

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Originally Posted by Virgil

One thing I can't help but feel from having read a bit of Stevens' poetry is that he has some internal color symbolism that he adheres to. I have never been able to penetrate it.

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Virgil, I'm not a Stevens scholar by any means, but it appears that color, especially primary colors, denote life or passion for Stevens, as opposed to white, grey, etc. I think of "Disillusionment of Ten o'Clock" in which no one wears colored nightgowns - just white - hence the "disillusionment".

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The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

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Only the sailor mentioned in the poem, dreams of "tigers in red weather" - he dreams a dream of
adventure that those in white nightgowns never could.

As far as "The Man With the Blue Guitar" - I think once again, Stevens uses color to denote passion or life. The day being "green" - productive, verdant perhaps. The man with the blue guitar seems to sum up the use of blue

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

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The guitar is different because it is blue - the color changes things just as emotion/passion changes perception of reality.

This is, of course, a wild stab in the dark, so feel free to disregard the crazy lady. :lol:

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Originally Posted by genoveva

\ They are attracted to each other and there is some sexual tension in the air?? The woman is nervous and her subtle gestures stand out to the man who is watching her intently? "What is all this?" could suggest "Why all the supressed energy? Let's get it on!" Just some thoughts... :brow:

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Actually, I've always thought it was something along these lines - a woman and a man caught in a state of desire. The man asking, "What is all this?" seems to wish to break the tension by destroying the illusion of calm and getting to the heart of the matter (pun intended) :D

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

For some reason the descriptions in this poem remind me of a painting--specifically one in the style of turn of the century (19th to 20th c. that is) American Impressionists. I could somehow imagine it being written, almost like our poetry contest here, about the portrait of a woman in white sitting quietly, or rather listlessly with her fan and beads and the bowl with the leaf beside her. At any rate, I think that part of the point is that she's affecting this rather blase ennui, attempting to create the kind of quiet, composed scene one might find in an impressionist painting, but that she is not in reality so composed at all.

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I definitely agree with you that the scene does resemble a painting - artfully composed to create a certain perception.

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

What, then, is all "this"--the external items, the feigned composure--about? I can hear the question asked in a couple of different ways. It could be said derisevely, as in "what is this all this about?" or, "who do you think you're trying to fool?" I think there's also a more subtle way to appreciate it as an almost contemplative statement: "what is really the worth of all these things, this manner, this pretension, when it has nothing to do with real feeling?"

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I had also considered the possibility of a more derisive tone from the speaker, but I really like your idea of the speaker asking the true worth of all the artifice in the face of real emotion. Wonderful. :thumbs_up

It's not technically the poem we're discussing, but since both Virgil and Hyacinth have brought up the first stanza of "The Man with the Blue Guitar," I thought I'd put in my two cents. I've always thought the "blue guitar" in this poem symbolized art and its relation to the "real" world. The poem was evidently written after Stevens saw Picasso's "The Old Guitarist" painted during the artist's Blue Period when his paintings were done almost entirely in blue (blue people, blue plants, blue everything). I thought the point is that the day is "green," which is the real life color (and, as Hyacinth says, symbolic of vitality and life), but it is rendered blue by art. Picasso paints things both as they are (i.e. the old guitarist is recognizably a man) and not as they are (he's a blue man). In some ways one might say painting the man in blues goes beyond verisimilitude, and penetrates more deeply into who/what he is by revealing something about his interior state ("a tune beyond us, yet ourselves"). In any case, I think blue stands for art and imagination, while green is reality and nature.

There's only one funny thing about this poem. I know the Picasso well because it's in the Chicago Art Institute where I go all the time, and the only thing in it that's not blue is the guitar. I've noticed that most people I talk to who have seen it remember the guitar as being blue though, so I'm assuming that Stevens also remembered it that way, or perhaps is using a little artistic license (he makes direct reference to the painting in the poem, so it was certainly on his mind). Even if he did remember the guitar wasn't blue, I still think there's no doubt that he is playing on the coloring of reality in the Blue Period works.

I love Wallace Stevens (particularly The Emperor of Ice Cream and Anecdote of the Jar), but I've never read this one before! I like how he uses the bright colors to contrast with the drab room, and the still/motion images in describing the mood.

Why do you suppose he uses only red and green:
green beads, green fan, and the "leaf" makes us think green without saying it...
red branches, red willow, and the "heart" makes us think red without saying it...

This poem intrigues me, but I want to make more sense of it. In what season does it take place? Do you think that is important to the theme?

So I know for next time (I'm knew to the site), who posts the original poem of the week, and on what day? Thanks everyone. I look forward to discussing more poetry with you!

Lycosparks--Welcome aboard. Anyone can post the poem for the week, and generally the new poem's been posted on Friday apropos of the rules in the initial post. This week's been a little confusing because we've had two poems, but it seems like most people have had their say about this one (I'm sure they'll loudly correct me if I'm wrong ;)), so if you have one in mind why don't you go for it. :)

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

Lycosparks--Welcome aboard. Anyone can post the poem for the week, and generally the new poem's been posted on Friday apropos of the rules in the initial post. This week's been a little confusing because we've had two poems, but it seems like most people have had their say about this one (I'm sure they'll loudly correct me if I'm wrong ;)), so if you have one in mind why don't you go for it. :)

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Hey! No one remarked on the first poem posted for five days.
I would like a chance to post a poem to be discussed the entire week. It seems that Steven's poetry requires more than two days to discuss properly, so I'd like to post another poem by him. You can disagree and ignore this post but here it is:

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock


The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.

Wallace Stevens

(1)There are a lot of references to color so we could discuss his possible purpose(s) for using color; (2)As well he makes use of the reality state and imaginative state in this poem, so we can discuss this too.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

One thing I can't help but feel from having read a bit of Stevens' poetry is that he has some internal color symbolism that he adheres to. I have never been able to penetrate it.

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I think if you look at this poem and look at how he relates certain colors with the reality state and other colors with the imaginative state, you can distinguish some of Steven's rules when it comes to color and symbolic meaning.

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Hey! No one remarked on the first poem posted for five days.
I would like a chance to post a poem to be discussed the entire week. It seems that Steven's poetry requires more than two days to discuss properly, so I'd like to post another poem by him. You can disagree and ignore this post but here it is:

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Sorry if I jumped the gun, ktd. You had said when you posted "Gray Room" that you only intended it for discussion until Friday, so I figured if someone wanted to post the next poem it was O.K. I'm sure we'll all enjoy discussing "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," especially since we've been prepped in our Stevens discussion the last few days. :)

I like the imagery and language of this poem, but I can't say I have more than a vague feeling for what he's getting at. I'll read it over a few more times and see if I can't articulate something about it later.

I guess I'll start the discussion by making note of the title Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock. Disillusionment means: to free from illusion; so the title should then read To Free From Illusion of Ten O' Clock. It's strange that the title doesn't read "...at 10 O' Clock" but "...of 10 O' Clock," which makes me look at 10 O' Clock not as a time when the speaker is to be free from illusions but 10 O' Clock is now a term, created by us--which I think is part of the illusion (imagination), because the term is used to arbitrarily denote a specific part of the day; and the things that are associated with it, by the speaker, which we find out is almost all false, is what's giving him the distorted view of reality(imagination or illusion) and hindering him from seeing reality in its truthful state.

I like this week's poem a lot, if I understand it correctly.

The old sailor, whomever he may be, represents someone who has traveled the world. He knows all about reality. And he is sort of escaping that, whether drunk on liquor or drunk on his thoughts, he enters into the world of imagination.

The white night-gowns perhaps represent everyone else in their homes. Drab, dull lives in reality, where they go to bed by 10 and don't appreciate the journeys on which the imagination can take you.

Thanks for the welcome, Petrarch's Love!!

And I agree with you ktd. He doesn't say "at 10" but rather "of 10." He is describing the disillusion of what happens around the world at 10pm. Not the time itself, but rather, what the world becomes at that time.

I don't know if that made any sense, but you said it better... :nod:

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Originally Posted by ktd222

I guess I'll start the discussion by making note of the title Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock. Disillusionment means: to free from illusion; so the title should then read To Free From Illusion of Ten O' Clock. It's strange that the title doesn't read "...at 10 O' Clock" but "...of 10 O' Clock," which makes me look at 10 O' Clock not as a time when the speaker is to be free from illusions but 10 O' Clock is now a term, created by us--which I think is part of the illusion (imagination), because the term is used to arbitrarily denote a specific part of the day; and the things that are associated with it, by the speaker, which we find out is almost all false, is what's giving him the distorted view of reality(imagination or illusion) and hindering him from seeing reality in its truthful state.

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Good point. I like your reading of this poem. I admit to having read this poem a few times over the course of years and never picked up the preposition, "of". It does seem to now fall into place.

The houses are haunted
By white-night gowns.

Is this a statement of truthful reality? Where is the speaker in this image? Where are the people in this image? Even the white-night gowns are absent of any figure wearing it. And it’s ‘the houses’ that are haunted, not the speaker. The image seems detached from any human embellishment. Compare the above lines with these lines:

People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.

Is this a statement of truthful reality, too? It seems matter-of-fact. Does anyone else think that there may be a connection between the words ‘haunted’ and ‘dream?’ ‘Dream’ seems like a word used to describe how we’d envisioned(imagine) something—that something, we have control of. ‘Haunted’ gets more at that something(reality) that’s uncontrollable by us—and that something reappears because of its own habitual nature.

So the color white seems to symbolize truthful reality in that there is no humans, no human form(in the way we believe it to be), no human emotion—just houses haunted by white-night gowns.