Wallace Stevens

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from The Man With The Blue Guitar

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR

Part XXII

Poetry is the subject of the poem,
From this the poem issues and

To this returns. Between the two,
Between issue and return, there is

An absence in reality,
Things as they are. Or so we say.

But are these separate? Is it
An absence for the poem, which acquires

Its true appearances there, sun's green,
Cloud's red, earth feeling, sky that thinks?

From these it takes. Perhaps it gives,
In the universal intercourse.

[Virgil]

Quasi, you've inspired me to pull out my "The Man With The Blue Guitar." I shall go through it tonight.

[quasimodo1]

Gray Room" (1917)

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.

online source: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilre...gray-room.html

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Poems Added to Harmonium

THE DEATH OF A SOLDIER

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from Poems Added to Harmonium

NEW ENGLAND VERSES

I. The Whole World Including the Speaker
Why nag at the ideas of Hercules, Don Don?
Widen your sense. All things in the sun are sun.

II. The Whole World Excluding the Speaker
I found between moon-rising and moon-setting
The world was round. But not from my begetting.

III. Soupe aux Perles
Health-O, when ginger and fromage bewitch
The vile antithesis of poor and rich.

IV. Soupe Sans Perles
I crossed in '38 in the Western Head.
It depends which way you crossed, the tea-belle said.

V. Boston With a Note-book
Lean encyclopaeedists, inscribe an Iliad.
There's a weltanschauung of the penny pad.

VI. Boston Without a Note-book
Let us erect in the Basin a lofty fountain.
Suckled on ponds, the spirit craves a watery mountain.

VII. Artist In Tropic
Of Phoebus Apothicaire the first beatitude:
Blessed, who is his nation's multitude.

VIII. Artist In Arctic
And of Phoebus the Tailor the second saying goes:
Blessed, whose beard is cloak against the snows.

IX. Statue Against a Clear Sky
Ashen man on ashen cliff above the salt halloo,
O ashen admiral of the hale, hard blue. . . .

X. Statue against a Cloudy Sky
Scaffolds and derricks rise from the reeds to the clouds
Meditating the will of men in formless crowds.

XI. Land of Locust
Patron and patriarch of couplets, walk
In fragrant leaves heat-heavy yet nimble in talk.

XII. Land of Pine ad Marble
Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints
Of he North have earned this crumb by their complaints.

XIII. The Male Nude
Dark cynic, strip and bathe and bask at will.
Without cap or strap, you are the cynic still.

XIV. The Female Nude
Ballatta dozed in the cool on a straw divan
At home, a bit like the slenderest courtesan.

XV. Scene Fletrie
The people dress in autumn and the belfry breath
Hunted autumnal farewells of academic death.

XVI. Scene Fleurie
A perfect fruit in perfect atmosphere.
Nature as Pinakothek. Whist! Chanticleer. . . . .

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from The Man With The Blue Guitar

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR

Part XXI

A substitute for all the gods:
This self, not that gold self aloft,

Alone, one's shadow magnified,
Lord of the body, looking down,

As now and called most high,
The shadow of Chocorua

In an immenser heaven, aloft,
Alone, lord of the land and lord

Of the men that live in the land, high lord.
One's self and the mountains of one's land,

Without shadows, without magnificence,
The flesh, the bone, the dirt, the stone.

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from The Man With The Blue Guitar

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR

Part XXIX

In the cathedral, I sat there, and read,
Alone, a lean Review and said,

"These degustations in the vaults
Oppose the past and the festival.

What is beyond the cathedral, outside,
Balances with nuptial song.

So it is to sit and to balance things
To and to and to the point of still,

To say of one mask it is like,
To say of another it is like,

To know that the balance does not quite rest,
That the mask is strange, however like."

The shapes are wrong and the sounds are false.
The bells are the bellowings of bulls.

Yet Franciscan don was never more
Himself than in this fertile glass.

[Virgil]

Oh Quasi. I was reading Margaret Avison last night and didn't get to Stevens. Perhaps once we're done with Avison we can set up a separate thread strictly for The Man With The Blue Guitar. How's that?

[quasimodo1]

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR most definitely deserves a dedicated thread but you are right about seeing some completion on Avison.

[Virgil]

Great.

[quasimodo1]

http://www.dotcalmvillage.net/nowwha...legacysep.html --- Picasso and Stevens

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.”

[quasimodo1]

from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose

from The Man With The Blue Guitar

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR
Part 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 man upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

Part II

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

I sing a hero's 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 so 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.

[Nick Capozzoli]

The Auroras of Autumn III

Farewell to an idea...The mother's face,
The purpose of the poem, fills the room.
They are together here, and it is warm,

With none of the prescience of oncoming dreams,
It is evening. The house is evening, half dissolved.
Only the half they can never possess remains,

Still starred. It is the mother they possess,
Who gives transparence to their present peace.
She makes that gentler that can gentle be.

And yet she too is dissolved, she is destroyed.
She gives transparence. But she has grown old.
The necklace is a carving not a kiss.

The soft hands are a motion not a touch.
The house will crumble and the books will burn.
They are at ease in a shelter of the mind

And the house is of the mind and they and time,
Together, all together. Boreal night
Will look like frost as it approaches them

And to the mother as she falls asleep
And as they say good-night, good night. Uptairs
The windows will be lighted, not the rooms.

And wind will spread its windy grandeurs round
And knock like a rifle butt against the door.
The wind will command them with invincible sound.

[Nick Capozzoli]

(excerpt)

The crow looks rusty as he rises up.
Bright is the malice in his eye...

One joins him there for company,
But at a distance, in another tree.

[Nick Capozzoli]

My two favorite passages from Sunday Morning are:


She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings...
...
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

and,

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darknessw, on extended wings.