Wallace Stevens

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from OWL'S CLOVER
{from Section IV, part six}

VI. If these were theoretical people, like
Small bees of spring, sniffing the coldest buds
Of a time to come-- A shade of horror turns
The bees to scorpions blackly-barbed, a shade
Of fear changes the scorpions to skins.
The civil fiction, the calico idea,
The Johnsonian composition, abstract man,
All are evasions like a repeated phrase,
Which, by its repetition, comes to bear
A meaning without a meaning. These people have
A meaning within the meaning they convey,
Walking the paths, watching the gilding sun,
To be swept across them when they are revealed,
For a moment, once each century or two.
The future for them is always the deepest dome,
The darkest blue of the dome and the wings around
The giant Phosphor of their earliest prayers.
Once each century or two. But then so great,
So epical a twist, catastrophe
For Isaac Watts: the diverting of the dream
Of heaven from heaven to the future, as a god,
Takes time and tinkering, melodious
And practical. The envoi to the past
Is largely another winding of the clock.
The tempo, in short, of this complicated shift,
With interruptions by vast hymns, blood odes,
Parades of whole races with attendant bands,
And the bees, the scorpions, the men that think,
The summer Sundays in the park, must be
A leaden ticking circular in width.
How shall we face the edge of time? We walk
In the park. We regret we have no nightingale.
We must have the throstle on the gramophone.
Where shall we find more than derisive words?
When shall lush chorals spiral through our fire
And daunt that old assassin, heart's desire?

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Uncollected Poems

SONNETS

I. I strode along my beaches like a sea,
The sand before me stretching firm and fair;
No inland darkness cast its shadow there
And my long step was gloriously free.
The careless wind was happy company
That hurried past and did not question where;
Yet as I moved I felt a deep despair
And wonder of the thoughts that came to me.

For to my face the deep wind brought the scent
Of flowers I could not see upon the strand;
And in the sky a silent cloud was blent
With dreams of my soul's stillness; and the sand,
That had been naught to me, now trembled far
In mystery beneath the evening star.

(1899)

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Uncollected Poems

SONNETS

II. Come, said the world, thy youth is not all play,
Upon these hills vast palaces must rise,
And over this green plain that calmly lies
In peace, a mighty city must have sway.
These weak and murmuring reeds cannot gainsay
The building of my wharves; this flood that flies
Unfathomed clear must bear my merchandise,
And sweep my burdens on their seaward way.

No, cried my heart, this thing I cannot do,
This is my home, this plain and water clear
Are my companions faultless as the sky--
I cannot, will not give them up to you.
And if you come upon them I shall fear,
And if you steal them from me I shall die.

{1899}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Uncollected Poems

SONNETS

III. When I think of all the centuries long dead,
The cities fall'n to dust, the kingdoms won
And in a moment lost again, the sun
That in a high and cloudless heaven led
Sad days of vanished beauty ere they fled,
Sad days so far and fair to muse upon, --
The earth grown grey and covered with the run
And progress of her years' unending tread.

Then my youth leaves me, and the blood
Leaps in its ardor like a flood.
Others with hot and angry pride, I cry
Others in their thin covered dust may lie
And give their majesty to some pale bud
But not-- if strength of will abides-- not I.

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Uncollected Poems

SONNETS

IV. Through dreary winter had my soul endured
With futile striving and grave argument
Brief sunless days of bitter discontent,
Until, at length, to all its griefs inured
It ceased from idle turmoil, and secured
A new and rich repose; each hour was blent
With easeful visions of the Orient
And cities on uncertain hills immured.

It seemed as though upon a mournful world
A pure-voiced robin had sent forth a ray
Of long-impending beauty, to allay
Her wild desire; as though her deep unrest
Was in a moment's minstrelsy uphurled
Sweet-startling from her heavy-laden breast.
{1899}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose
from Uncollected Poems

SONNETS

V. The rivers flow on idly in their light
The world is sleeping, and the golden dower
Of heaven is silent as a languorous flower
That spreads its deepness on the tender night.
The distant cities glimmer pale and bright
Each like a separate far and flaring bower
Noiseless and undisturbed in resting power
Filled with the semblance of a vaster might.

Upon this wide and star-kissed plain, my life
Is soon to feel the stir and heat of strife.
Let me look on then for a moment here
Before the morn wakes up my lust for wrong,
Let me look on a moment without fear
With eyes undimmed and youth both pure and strong.

{1899}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose
from Uncollected Poems

SONNNETS

VI. If we are leaves that fall upon the ground
To lose our greenness in the quiet dust
Of forest-depths; if we are flowers that must
Lie torn and creased upon a bitter mound,
No touch of sweetness in our ruins found;
If we are weeds whom no one wise can trust
To live and hour before we feel the gust
Of Death, and by our side its last keen sound

Then let a tremor through our briefness run,
Wrapping it in with mad, sweet sorcery
Of love; for in the fern I saw the sun
Take fire against the dew; the lily white
Was soft and deep at morn; the rosary
Streamed forth a wild perfume into the light.
{1899}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose
from Parts of a World

YELLOW AFTERNOON

It was in the earth only
That he was at the bottom of things
And of himself. There he could say
Of this I am, this is the patriarch,
This it is that answers when I ask,
This is the mute, the final sculpture
Around which silence lies on silence.
This reposes alike in springtime
And, arbored and bronzed, in autumn.

He said I had this that I could love,
As one loves visible and responsive peace,
As one loves one's own being,
As one loves that which is the end
And must be loved, as one loves that
Of which one is a part as in a unity,
A unity that is the life one loves,
So that one lives all the lives that comprise it
As the life of the fatal unity of war.

Everything comes to him
From the middle of his field. ... {excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Parts of a World

ARRIVAL AT THE WALDORF


..........

Where the wild poem is a substitute
For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.

You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight
Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra
Hums and you say "The world in a verse,

A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains,
Women invisible in music and motion and color,"
After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.
{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose
from Parts of a World

EXTRACTS FROM ADDRESSES TO
THE ACADEMY OF FINE IDEAS

I. A crinkled paper makes a brilliant sound.
The wrinkled roses tinkle, the paper ones,
And the ear is glass, in which the noises pelt,
The false roses-- Compare the silent rose of the sun
And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell,
With this paper, this dust. That states the point.

………………………………………………………………….Messieurs,
It is an artificial world. The rose
Of paper is of the nature of its world.
The sea is so many written words; the sky
Is blue, clear, cloudy, high, dark, wide and round;
The mountains inscribe themselves upon the walls.
And, otherwise, the rainy rose belongs
To naked men, to women naked as rain.

Where is that summer warm enough to walk
Among the lascivious poisons, clean of them,
And in what covert may we, naked, be
Beyond the knowledge of nakedness, as part
Of reality, beyond the knowledge of what
Is real, part of a land beyond the mind?

Rain is an unbearable tyranny. Sun is
A monster-maker, an eye, only an eye,
A shapener of shapes for only the eye,
Of things no better than paper things, of days
That are paper days. The false and true are one.

II. The eye believes and its communion takes.
The spirit laughs to see the eye believe
And its communion take. And now of that.
Let the Secretary for Porcelain observe
That evil made magic, as in catastrophe,
If neatly glazed, becomes the same as the fruit
Of an emperor, the egg-plant of a prince.
The good is evil's last invention. Thus
The maker of catastrophe invents the eye
And through the eye equates ten thousand deaths
With a single well-tempered apricot, or, say,
An egg-plant of good air.

…………………………………………………………………..My beards, attend
To the laughter of evil: the fierce ricanery
With the ferocious chu-chot-chu between, the sobs
For breath to laugh the louder, the deeper gasps
Uplifting the completest rhetoric
Of sneers, the fugues commencing at the toes
And ending at the finger-tips. . . . . It is death
That is ten thousand deaths and evil death.
Be tranquil in your wounds. It is good death
That puts an end to evil death and dies.
Be tranquil in your wounds. The placing star
Shall be the gentler for the death you die
And the helpless philosophers say still helpful things.
Plato, the reddened flower, the erotic bird.

{excerpted from the poem, of eight parts}

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Poems Added to Harmonium

SONATINA TO HANS CHRISTIAN

If any duck in any brook,
Fluttering the water
For your crumb,
Seemed the helpless daughter

Of a mother
Regretful that she bore her;
Or of another,
Barren, and longing for her,

What of the dove,
Or thrush, or any singing mysteries?
What of the trees
And intonations of the trees?

What of the night
That lights and dims the stars?
Do you know, Hans Christian,
Now that you see the night?

[quasimodo1]

August 9, 1931

Pure Poetry and Mr. Wallace Stevens
By PERCY HUTCHISON

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HARMONIUM
By Wallace Stevens.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More than one critic, and not a few poets, have toyed with the idea of what has been termed ure poetry," which is to say, a poetry which should depend for its effectiveness on its rhythms and the tonal values of the words employed with as complete a dissociation from ideational content as may be humanly possible. Those who have argued for such "pure poetry" have frequently, if not always, been obsessed with some hazy notion of an analogy between music and poetry. As a shining example of this school take Sidney Lanier, who was a skilled musician as well as a notable poet. Lanier advanced the theory that every vowel has its color value. This was not an association of ideas; the letter "e" was not red because it is in the word red, or green because it is in the word green, but the hearer, experiencing the word should, on Lanier's theory, experience, simultaneously with the sound, a distinct sensation of color. In the second decade of this century--the movement began in the first decade--numerous poetic schools drove theory hard. Perhaps none strove especially to carry out Lanier's color hypothesis, but there were the Imagists, and there was Vorticism and Cubism, and many more "isms" besides. For the most part, these schools have died the death which could have been prophesied for them. Poetry is founded in ideas; to be effective and lasting, poetry must be based on life, it must touch and vitalize emotion. For proof, one has but to turn to the poetry that has endured. In poetry, doctrinaire composition has no permanent place.

Hence, unpleasant as it is to record such a conclusion, the very remarkable work of Wallace Stevens cannot endure. The verses which go to make up the volume "Harmonium" are as close to "pure poetry" as one could expect to come. And so far as rhythms and vowels and consonants may be substituted for musical notes, the volume is an achievement. But the achievement is not poetry, it is a tour de force, a "stunt" in the fantastic and the bizarre. From one end of the book to the other there is not an idea that can vitally affect the mind, there is not a word that can arouse emotion. The volume is a glittering edifice of icicles. Brilliant as the moon, the book is equally dead. Only when Stevens goes over to the Chinese does he score, and then not completely, for with all the virtuosity that his verse displays he fails quite to attain the lacquer finish of his Oriental masters. The following, "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores," is the piece that comes nearest to the Chinese, and this is marred by the intrusion in the last line of the critical adjective "stupid."


I say now, Fernando, that on that day
The mind roamed as a moth roams,
Among the blooms beyond the open sand;
And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the sea-weeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear
Then it was that the monstered moth
Which had lain folded against the blue
And the colored purple of the lazy sea,
And which had drowsed along the bony shores,
Shut to the blather that the water made,
Rose up besprent and sought the flaming red
Dabbled with yellow pollen-red as red
As the flag above the old cafe--
And roamed there all the stupid afternoon.


For the full tonal and rhythmic effect of this it must be read aloud, chanted, as Tennyson and Swinburne chanted their verses. Then, within its limits, its very narrow limits, "Hibiscus" will be found to be a musical attainment not before guessed at. But it is not poetry in the larger meaning of the term. And it is not actually music that one has here, but an imitation of music. And if there is a mood conveyed, the mood could have been equally as well conveyed by other lines equally languid of rhythm. No doubt the theorists in poetry have enriched their craft, but at a disservice to themselves. Wallace Stevens is a martyr to a lost cause.



{from the New York Times}

[Virgil]

I guess Quasi there is no link to that entire article. Looks like a very interesting article. This thread of yours has convinced me (though I always suspected) that Stevens is the finest American poet of the 20th century and therefore perhaps of all time.

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Poems Added to Harmonium

THE MAN WHOSE PHARYNX WAS BAD

The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know.
I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant of the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian. . . . .
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate,
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze,

One might in turn become less diffident,
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.

[Virgil]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Poems Added to Harmonium

THE MAN WHOSE PHARYNX WAS BAD

The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know.
I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant of the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian. . . . .
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate,
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze,

One might in turn become less diffident,
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.

Qusai, I was going to say what a terrible poem. And it is. But then I realized the significance of the title, "The Man Whose Pharanx Was Bad," and that is the point of the poem. The pharanx is bad. Cute and clever, but I never really like when poets consciously write bad stuff. Sure it's consciously done, but it's still bad stuff.