PoemoftheWeek

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Originally Posted by blp

Good, yes. I think you're right about most of this, but it's funny how exegisis can kill things a bit.

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I really didn’t mean to kill it. I’d hoped people would offer different views and some possible answers to the bits I can’t get. Still, it’s early yet.

What you call exegesis is simply the way I try to make sense of a poem. I assume that it means something rather than anything and also assume that there is some kind of coherence there. Sometimes the poem tries to be anything rather than something and a lack of coherence is deliberate. You make it sound as if I’ve made a Papal pronouncement on what the poem ‘means’. I’ve just explained what I see it as ‘meaning’ (at least the bits of it that I understand).

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Originally Posted by blp

There's another Stevens poems that I'd still rank one of my favourites - The Emperor of Icecream, but it was spoiled just a little for both me and a friend when his college poetry tutor told him what it was about. We'd thought it was all just itself, somehow.

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I have really mixed feelings about this. Obviously I can sympathise with you. I like The Emperor of Ice-Cream because I know ‘what it’s about’. I don’t mean that I feel like one of the select few! I mean that only by knowing that there is reference to a funeral can I appreciate the absurd humour. There wasn’t much ice cream at most of the funerals I’ve attended. :lol: This raises a very difficult issue. Do you allow students to generate their own meanings or do you push them in a certain direction? If I don’t make them aware of the funeral, then they will miss something that Stevens presumably took the time and effort to include. I know that the author is dead and all but I tend to think that I am not doing justice to the person who wrote it if I allow something that is particularly clever/effective/evocative etc. to go unnoticed. My job as a teacher is to encourage an appreciation of Literature. To do this, I have to demonstrate why certain lines, say, are powerful/effective/clever and so on. My own enthusiasm for what I think is good certainly generates some appreciation. The problem for some people is that they think I am imposing my own readings and to an extent I am. I feel the years of study and reading have given me some degree of authority to do so. People tend to accept this idea when it comes to doctors, lawyers and even many teachers but when it comes to Literature, there is uneasiness.

Often, students will try to hide a lack of basic understanding by offering nebulous suggestions about what certain lines could ‘mean’. I’m not trying to suggest that you have done this, by the way. These suggestions can be imaginative but when you have a poet like Plath for instance, who writes with almost forensic precision at times, I think similar clarity and precision are needed in the response. You can’t appreciate a line of Plath’s like “the black amnesias of heaven” if you think the phrase refers to a dark-petalled flower.

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Originally Posted by blp

I think I'll get back to liking this one for its language too and maybe I'll even realise there's more to it than you say,

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Oh, dear! Of course there is! I haven’t produced the definitive reading! It hardly amounts to a reading at all. Crushing though it would be, I’d now like to see someone dispose of my reading and offer something totally different and far more convincing.

I’m not sure what you mean by “liking this one for its language too”. Do you mean as well as for its ‘meaning’? I’m sure that even if you are unable to forget my exegesis (not at all likely), you will still encounter the poem time and again with fresh insights. Have you really lost the ability to enjoy The Emperor of Ice-Cream? Can’t what you know now help you to enjoy it more? Perhaps it’s more a reflection of the context in which you first encountered it. The experience of discussing it with your friend is what made that particular encounter special in some way. It’s as if you’ve suddenly realised that the girl who was your first love was as ugly as sin and nowhere near as interesting. :D

Sometimes (actually, quite often) I remember lines that I have heard or read many times, in a particular context. I don’t know if you know Richard III but there is a scene when Buckingham asks Richard for the lands he had been promised as a reward for helping him to the throne. Richard is suspicious of Buckingham for responding coolly to a suggestion that the princes should be murdered. He delays giving him the land, as punishment. Buckingham pushes and Richard responds,

“I am not in the giving vein today”.

A student once asked me to buy some flower or something for charity. The line popped into my head and I delivered it.

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Originally Posted by blp

but for the moment a lot of that seems right - and a bit banal.

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What I wrote or the poem? If you mean the poem, I don’t think it’s banal and as I said, I can admire it. If you mean, what I wrote, I’m sorry.

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Originally Posted by blp

some humdrum discussion of some eternal cycle.

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I hope that’s not how you think I see the poem. You make me feel as if I’ve torn out a huge swathe of your childhood. “He took my childhood in his stride.” Look out, the Grim Reaper is coming!

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Originally Posted by blp

It reminds me a lot of the sound of rioting at the beginning of The Smiths' Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me and, I think, works in a very similar way to the way that plays off the sadness and longing of that song. And already I'm back to liking it.

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:D ;) I knew you should have faith in Stevens. I don’t like a lot of his stuff but I don’t think it’s in any way bad – just a bit too cold – like Donne would be without the wit.

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Originally Posted by blp

Also, Unnamable, unless I've misunderstood you, I think you've missed a tiny bit at the beginning. Isn't the sound motionless simply because the waltzes have ended?

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Yes, I agree. I think I dived straight into the bits I found more problematic.

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Originally Posted by blp

As in All good things - love affairs, just politics etc. And, yes, at some point you get used to it - and become skeptical of the Waltz in general.

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You make it sound much more like resignation than I think it is. In a way, I think Stevens is celebrating the new as well as lamenting the passing of the old.

PS Love affairs are not one of the "good things" on my list. ;)

I think this poem is about a woman.

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Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue

I think this poem is about a woman.

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Her name wouldn’t be Matilda, would it?

Sorry, Unnamable, I had no intention of implying your reading was definitive, that you'd killed the poem, that what you'd said was banal, that you'd torn out etc. Gah. Oh well.

All I was trying to say was that I have mixed feelings about the process of interpretation. Sometimes it can be intriguing, sometimes your romantic analogy is more how it feels - but I'd say it's more like realising that someone who'd seemed fascinating is actually quite shallow. I did start to feel something like that (about the poem) reading your post, but that was up to me and it was because I agreed with what (I thought) you said. I didn't resent you for saying what you did. I wasn't saying you shouldn't have said it or accusing you of being dull or authoritarian, just commenting on the risk of let down when interpretation demystifies something - but I posted the poem and I knew the risk and I certainly didn't expect people to not interpret it. I was very curious to see what people would say about it. So thanks for your detailed input, honestly.

No, I still love The Emperor of Icecream. The disappointment was not in finding out that it was about a funeral, which seems clear from the 'spread it so as to cover her face' line, but that, specifically, it was about a Mexican funeral - where all the elements described - wenches in such dress as they are used to wear, concupiscent curds, and the emperor of icecream himself, were said by my friend's teacher to be traditional. What we'd thought was Stevens' brilliant invention turned out to be taken from real life. Well, nothing comes from nothing and it may have been naive of us to think it did.

The thing I said about coming back to the language - no, I don't mean separately from the meaning, but I think on the whole in poetry, the language is what makes the difference. The painter Willem de Kooning said, 'Content is small' and, while it's not a universally applicable statement, it often applies in poetry, where the content can be as small as 'I fancy you', 'I'm sorry you died', 'My dad screwed me up' etc. And the language is the first thing for me with the Waltz poem - as well as the thing that saved it for me when I started to doubt it. Part of that, unsurprisingly, is to do with the meaning it suggests, and in doubting it, I must admit, I started to wonder if it was a smoke and mirrors act - because the poem does a grand job of suggesting that its content might be fairly big and, unfortunately, I really do think now, for now, that it's describing a rather pat transition from order to chaos to order again. I can see there's more to it than that, but just the fact that it's there at all bothers me a little, especially as the thematic structure of the poem. Maybe it's a bit too optimistic for me too. That said, it leaves me with puzzles that are sort of pleasurably troubling.

Yes, I think there is some resignation in the beginning. It doesn't rule out what you say - the end does seem optimistic, but the hope is said to be in skepticism. Also, even at the beginning, there may be optimism: 'mourn no more' implies this, it's just that it sounds like a hope born out of some loss of illusion.

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Originally Posted by Unnamable

PS Love affairs are not one of the "good things" on my list.

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Couldn't be because 'too many have ended' could it? ;) That's what I was driving at in describing a kind of resignation.

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Originally Posted by Grumbleguts

I can't find a philosopher of that name.

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Mmm. At some point I'll crack and look this up too, but I'm still sticking to my impressions. But yeah, I've never heard of a philosopher called Hoon.

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Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue

I think this poem is about a woman.

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Why?

Hi Unnamable. Why Matilda?

PS. Great analysis on post #179

I found it very interesting that you have analysed it by the construction of each verse. There are, or seem to be, a lot of changes in the tone and rhythm between each verse, which you have identified. I like your analysis of verses 5, 6, and 7 about how form and order are fractured by the change of pace and images.

"I take it as a poem about sadly acknowledging the passing of one kind of order for another. This doesn’t happen quietly and without alarm but Stevens nevertheless appears somehow reassured by the end." p#179

Maybe (it's a big maybe, I won't dare challenging you) this poem does not focus on the changes of form and order so much as focusing on the necessary processes that come with it, including mourning, remorse, and moving on. And maybe simply “change” isn’t enough, but loss, rejection may be more appropriate.

Hoon, I think, is the symbol of the ego, the internal perceptions. Hoon "found all form and order in solitude." But none was external; the orders and forms that Hoon found were never real, "for whom the shapes were never the figures of men." That’s why he is unhappy with the order that he found. Hoon, to me, is very lonely, almost imprisoned and tortured. For I can think of no worse torture than being able to find all form and order (meaning everything, or justice perhaps), but still be unsatisfied. What else can Hoon do? And vice versa. Hoon found the "mode of desire, a mode of revealing desire" of the real world through the waltz, only to find that it is not what he wants at all, and that for him "desire was never that of the waltz." Because he had found order and form in solitude before the waltz even started.

Hoon is torn between mourning an inevitable loss and pride. If he is fine in solitude, why should he mourn? But he does mourn, because Hoon is weaker than reality. Hoon is the embodiment of sorrow. Hoon himself is not sorrow, for he clings on to the waltz and doesn't want it to end. He's afraid of being forgotten when changes will be adapted to.

Loss, especially an inevitable loss, is unbearable by the lonely mind. But there comes a time when the mind must wake up and interact with the world, whose sceptics
"Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows."
Hoon is dead then, as is the sorrow of loss and being rejected. It will only happen when the waltz ends, but when it plays again, the inevitable process repeats itself.

Am I making any sense?

Good observations above. Here are some of my observatuions, of which I can't still put together the overall theme.

The poem seems to be divided into four parts:

(1) Up through the first sentence of the third stanza, "...waltzes have ended." Here it there is a postive outlook by the narrator. Unpacked it could read as: The time for mourning over motionless sound is no longer possible; music/waltz is no longer in a mode of desire. Mode is a key word here, and I pun on key. Mode in music usually refers to being in a minor or major key. Another loaded word here is "truth." When a writer tells you "the truth" you better take notice.

(2) The second part starts with "And then..." And here the mode shifts to a minor key, a pessimistic outlook from the point of view of Hoon, all because of his solitude. Forms have vanished. A sort of chaos is percieved, no order in "sea or sun." Alone he cannot formulate the world.

(3) Suddenly, "mobs of men" show up, the opposite of Hoon's solitude, a third shift in point of view. And here it jumps back to a major key, "happy, without knowing how/Imposing forms they cannot describe/Requiring order beyond their speech," an abundance of positive associations. And he ties this back to the first section, "Too many waltzes have ended," linking the narrator with the mob or vice versa.

(4) "Yet..." a signal for another and final transition. Who's point of view here? I think it's back to the narrator. Here he glorifies the voices of the mob, equating it to the waltz ("too, may be/Modes of desire"). What is he doing here at the end? Bringing it back full circle? Ostracizing Hoon? He amputates the rondeau lyric, "Too many waltzes--" and then he starts the next sentence "The epic of disbelief." Disbelief? Who's? He then follows that up with the very unmusical "Blares oftener" (ugly and awkward) and repeats the word "soon" three times in two lines. Is "soon" an echo back to Hoon? And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"? I think so, but not sure. And he ends the last stanza with the affirmative "Will" three times, each at the beginning of each line. This fourth section seems to tie the themes together.


So, is Hoon, in his solitude, the creator of the poem? "Mountain-minded I think refers to being with a mind in the clouds, away from the mobs of men. Does it take the solitary mountain-minded Hoon, the one who doesn't feel desire in the waltz, to piece together "men and their shapes" and their happiness?

It's a reading.

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Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue

Hi Unnamable. Why Matilda?

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I thought you were being humorous when you simply threw in your remark above without explanation. The only woman I could think of with a strong association to waltzes was ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

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Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue

Maybe this poem does not focus on the changes of form and order so much as focusing on the necessary processes that come with it, including mourning, remorse, and moving on. And maybe simply “change” isn’t enough, but loss, rejection may be more appropriate.

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I’d happily accept that. The bit of mine you quoted was just a tired attempt to summarise what I’d said before.

I’m not sure about your comments on Hoon. I don’t think he was unhappy or even unfulfilled in his self-contained world, at least not until the change that the narrator registers occurs.

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Originally Posted by “blp”

specifically, it was about a Mexican funeral.

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I don’t see this.

“We cannot know what personal events prompted this 1922 poem, apparently set in Key West (so the poet Elizabeth Bishop conjectured, who knew Key West, where Cubans worked at the machines in cigar factories, where blacks always had ice cream at funerals),”
From The Columbia History of American Poetry Ed. Jay Parini and Brett C. Miller. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.

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Originally Posted by “blp”

Couldn't be because 'too many have ended' could it? ;) That's what I was driving at in describing a kind of resignation.

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No – it’s because ‘too many have started’. ;)

Thanks for clearing up the rest.

Virgil,

I agree that the poem is divided into 4 parts and at the points that you suggested. I like the analysis of the word ‘mode’. I think you’re right, the reason that it is there is because the author was referring particularly to music. Maybe he is being very specific and does not want the reader to stray off this line of thinking. Maybe he repeats “too many waltzes have ended” for this purpose.

From your observation, I notice that the author puts a lot of weight on a few words. Besides, as you pointed out, ‘mode’ and ‘truth’ and, of course, ‘waltz’, I think the words ‘form’ and ‘order’ are also important; because they are the only link between Hoon and the mobs of men. Both seek form and order: Hoon “found all form and order in solitude” and the mobs were “Imposing forms they cannot describe/Requiring order beyond their speech.” But only Hoon found form and order, the mobs of men tried but in vain.

The difference between them is that Hoon is alone, and the mobs of men are many. I love the phrase “clouds of faces and arms.” It seems almost an inhuman description of something that is human. When I read it I imagine a cloud of heads and arms sticking out in random places (childish, I know). The mobs, made up of humans of perfect form and order like Hoon, are together mutated in form and order, which is why they cannot define exactly what they want: “These voices crying without know for what.”

I love that you have viewed the poem as a song: “…the mode shifts to a minor key” and “…it jumps back to a major key.” I also thought that the poem should be read in the time frame of the “gay waltz”. All of this happens during the waltz.

“And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"?” I don’t think that Hoon is the skeptic. I thought that it is the skeptic who will end Hoon (I think I explained it in my original poster). And the skeptic cannot be the mobs of men, because he “will unite these figures of men.” Maybe the skeptic is a third party, the musician perhaps. The musician plays another waltz, ending solitude and making sense of the mobs of men’s desire. …maybe

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

“We cannot know what personal events prompted this 1922 poem, apparently set in Key West (so the poet Elizabeth Bishop conjectured, who knew Key West, where Cubans worked at the machines in cigar factories, where blacks always had ice cream at funerals),”
From The Columbia History of American Poetry Ed. Jay Parini and Brett C. Miller. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.

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Seems to have been some Chinese whisper process going on between my friend's tutor, me and, perhaps, my memory of the whole thing. Presumably it was something more like a Cuban funeral.

I'll read over the rest of what's been going on when i have a bit of time. Looks interesting.

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Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue

“And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"?” I don’t think that Hoon is the skeptic. I thought that it is the skeptic who will end Hoon (I think I explained it in my original poster). And the skeptic cannot be the mobs of men, because he “will unite these figures of men.” Maybe the skeptic is a third party, the musician perhaps. The musician plays another waltz, ending solitude and making sense of the mobs of men’s desire. …maybe

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Thank you for you comments. I think you're right on everything you say. Hoon may not be the skeptic. So let's count the characters: the narrator, the poet if he is different than the narrator (I'm not sure), Hoon, the mob, and the skeptic. So who is the skeptic? Is he the narrator, the poet, or a separate entity? Is the skeptic part of the mob? I also just noticed that the narrator in the second line positions himself as part of a group, "we can mourn..."

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Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue

“And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"?”

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I don’t see how this can refer to Hoon, either. The phrase itself perhaps tells us enough. In stanza 8, Stevens uses ‘Yet’ and ‘may’ when considering the crowds. He is not certain that they are expressing a ‘rage for order’. They could simply be a destructive, anarchic force that cannot be channelled.

When we look back at a past era, we tend to think of it as having been a more innocent time, a time when we could enjoy simpler pleasures. Today we think everyone is more knowing, less satisfied with the unsophisticated. Obviously each succession generation will come to feel this. (On a banal note, I can remember when I first saw the original Star Wars movie. I was amazed by the special effects. Yet when I watched it with my 12 year old niece last year, she said that she thought it was ‘okay’ but that some of the special effects were a bit ‘old-fashioned’.) I think there is something similar going on here – Stevens is positive and assumes that there is the same need for order in these mobs as that which exists in the rest of us. Therefore future harmony will be possible. What the mobs really want could be to kill and destroy but Stevens believes that what they really want is order. However, he is positive but not blindly optimistic - he is also aware that he could simply be underestimating the destructive force of the mobs so he will need to tread carefully. If we think of some of the mobs of twentieth century history, we can see why. Some of those mobs of men went on to be enlisted by Stalin and Hitler.

If the mob’s rage can be brought within some kind of artistic expression, then “their shapes/Will glisten again with motion, the music/Will be motion and full of shadows.” Stevens believes it can but that it will take someone more aware of the potential for evil than those who provided form and order in the past. They will need to be ‘skeptical’ in their attempt to restore harmony. It will take a “harmonious skeptic” producing “skeptical music”.

The reason I suggested earlier that Stevens might be the “harmonious skeptic” and his poetry the “skeptical music” was because of what the mobs are said to be lacking: “they cannot describe” and “order beyond their speech”. So the emphasis is on verbal expression.


Interestingly, you like Stevens’ use of a word that is part of the reason I don’t like the poem.

The definitions of ‘mode’ include usage in Music (as Virgil pointed out), Philosophy, Logic, Statistics, Mathematics, Geology, Physics and Grammar. It’s too impersonal for me – as are his uses of ‘form’ and ‘order’.

Donne does something similar with his uses of the language of Alchemy, Science, Cartography and Geometry to describe human emotions. However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isn’t.

Unnamable - You make some good points here, but there is one place where I think you're off target.

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What the mobs really want could be to kill and destroy but Stevens believes that what they really want is order.

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Where is that from? "Kill and destroy?" I don't see any suggestion of good/evil association. What I see are distictions of points of view. And the ability of a skeptic, outside the mob, to piece together order, form, and art, while the mob, in it's energy, lacks this ability.

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However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isn’t.

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This poem perhaps. But you haven't read all of Stevens. The poem I typed out above that followed this in the collection is very funny. It's comically absurd.

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Originally Posted by “Virgil

”Unnamable - You make some good points here, but there is one place where I think you're off target.

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Managed to find one, then? ;)

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Originally Posted by “Virgil

Where is that from? "Kill and destroy?"

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I didn’t say that it what they will do but what they could do. I base this on the fact that the word Stevens has used is ‘mob’. Does the word itself have any positive or negative connotations? Would you agree that mobs are threatening? Don’t you find the sudden appearance of these men also rather threatening? I do. What do you think might happen when “an immense suppression” is “freed”? You seem aware of this when you wrote, “He then follows that up with the very unmusical "Blares oftener" (ugly and awkward)”. It’s jarring, discordant – as they are. Think about the connotations of “Blares”.

I repeat what I said earlier about stanzas 5, 6 and 7: “The first two end-stopped lines reiterate the loss that has occurred but then he next seven lines are one long, clause-heavy sentence. This has the effect of accelerating our progress through a series of suddenly quite threatening images. It’s as if something has been unleashed. Form and order are fractured.”
The fact that it is the artist (in the form of Stevens the poet) ordering these lines indicates that artistic creation can tame chaos. The lines give the impression of encroaching disorder but he has done that through his use of rhyme, commas, etc. – in other words, through his artistry. The idea of Art’s capacity to produce order amid “slovenly wilderness” is explored in Anecdote of the Jar (which I do like). For Stevens, art is simply order.

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Originally Posted by “Virgil

I don't see any suggestion of good/evil association.

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It doesn’t have to be expressed in those terms – order and disorder will do. However, I don’t think that Stevens suggests that the price of disorder is simply confusion. As I said, those lines are menacing. There is something ominous about the mob’s directionless energy. Even though I think the poem is unnecessarily cerebral, I don’t think it was merely an intellectual exercise (funnily enough, I do feel this with Donne at times). Whatever made Stevens include the mob, I think he perceived some genuine threat in the world around him.

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Originally Posted by “Virgil

What I see are distictions of points of view.
And the ability of a skeptic, outside the mob, to piece together order, form, and art, while the mob, in it's energy, lacks this ability.

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But isn’t what the skeptic will do precisely what Stevens has done here? He has created order (a poem) out of his sense of fracture and loss. This is also consistent with the idea that “skeptical music” is poetry.

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Originally Posted by “Virgil

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However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isn’t.

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This poem perhaps. But you haven't read all of Stevens. The poem I typed out above that followed this in the collection is very funny. It's comically absurd.

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Come on now, Virgil. I wasn’t trying to trash Stevens and enthrone a British poet in his place. :lol: I did make it perfectly clear that I was only referring to this particular poem. I also said that I like some of his stuff. For you he is one of the top poets of the twentieth century; for me, he isn’t. Does it matter? It’s not as if I’m trying to encourage people to dislike him. Be fair to me; if anything, I have tried hard to help people gain a better understanding of what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. Whether they then like him or not is up to them and the comments I made should help them have a better foundation on which to base their decision.

And no, I haven’t read every single Stevens poem. So you got me there! ;)

PS The Snowman also leaves me cold. :D

I don't think that the music is referred to here simply as "some kind of artistic expression" (p#193) to describe the mob's rage. I think that the music is the focus of the poem; we shouldn't start to look at a broader meaning of the poem until we have found the very specific points that the author is trying to make.

I do agree that the words 'form' and 'order' may be too impersonal, or not as specific as I'd hope (They don’t just refer to music). But they make a solid point. Form and order surely are the essential means of existence. If something lacks either form or order, it will cease to shape (like the desires of the mob).

Virgil. I think you're right to make the skeptic the focus. The last two verses clearly state that the waltzes, "the epic of disbelief", will be made "constant" by the skeptic's skeptical music; so all will be solved by this character, making him a key character.

We are not told who the skeptic is, but we are told that the skeptic is the creator of the music: "Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music..." Perhaps, it was also the skeptic who played the waltz.

I think that, for that reason, the skeptic cannot be the author himself or the narrator, because the author (who I think is the same as the narrator) is passive in relation to the waltz. (unless the author himself was the creator of the music). I think, as you suggested, he is a separate entity. He must be a musician, for he creates music. And (perhaps I’m way off line here), because the author refers to him as “some …skeptic”, he is a stranger to the author.