Wallace Stevens

[ennison]

I've never taken to the cove. Pessimistic. Oh certainly clever and a stripped down beauty but not my cup-of-tea. But then again it's over twenty years since I read any serious quantity of his verse.

[quasimodo1]

THE NECESSARY ANGEL {Essays on Reality and the Imagination} “…I am the necessary angel of earth, Since, in my sight, you see the earth again.” from THE AURORAS OF AUTUMN ………….INTRODUCTION…….One function of the poet at any time is to discover by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time. Ordinarily he will disclose what he finds in his own poetry by way of the poetry itself. He exercises this function most often without being conscious of it, so that the disclosures in his poetry, while they define what seems to him to be poetry, are disclosures of poetry, not disclosures of definitions of poetry. The papers that have been collected here are intended to be contributions to the theory of poetry and it is this and this alone that binds them together. Obviously, they are not the carefully organized notes of systematic study. Except for the paper on one of Miss Moore’s poems, they were written to be spoken and this affects their character. While all of them were published, after they had served the purposes for which they were written, I had no thought of making a book out of them. Several years ago, when this was suggested, I felt that their occasional and more or less informal character made it desirable at least to postpone coming to a decision. The theory of poetry, as a subject of study, was something with respect to which I had nothing but the most ardent ambitions. It seemed to me to be one of the great subjects of study. I do not mean one more ARS POETICA having to do, say, with the techniques of poetry and perhaps with its history. I mean poetry itself, the naked poem, the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words. The few pages that follow are, now, alas! The only realization possible to me of those excited ambitions. …
{excerpt}

[Virgil]

“…I am the necessary angel of earth, Since, in my sight, you see the earth again.”

That's one of my all time favorite quotes. I absolutely love that quote. I have that book of essays and I have read one or two.

[quasimodo1]

"The theory of poetry, as a subject of study, was something with respect to which I had nothing but the most ardent ambitions. It seemed to me to be one of the great subjects of study. I do not mean one more ARS POETICA having to do, say, with the techniques of poetry and perhaps with its history. I mean poetry itself, the naked poem, 'the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words.'" Virgil: This last sentence also stands out for me as the closest thing to a terse definition of poetry. q1

[Virgil]

"The theory of poetry, as a subject of study, was something with respect to which I had nothing but the most ardent ambitions. It seemed to me to be one of the great subjects of study. I do not mean one more ARS POETICA having to do, say, with the techniques of poetry and perhaps with its history. I mean poetry itself, the naked poem, 'the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words.'" Virgil: This last sentence also stands out for me as the closest thing to a terse definition of poetry. q1

You're right. I'm not sure I've ever seen that quote before, but if I did shame on me for not remembering. Very good Quasi. Thanks as always.

[quasimodo1]

…{continued from above post} … But to their extent they are a realization; and it is because that is true, that is to say, because they seem to me to communicate to the reader the portent of the subject, if nothing move, that they are presented here. Only recently I spoke of certain poetic acts as subtilizing experience and varying appearance: “The real is constantly being engulfed in the unreal… [Poetry] is an illumination of a surface, the movement of a self in the rock.” A force capable of bringing about fluctuations in reality in words free from mysticism is a force independent of one’s desire to elevate it. It needs no elevation. It has only to be presented, as best one is able to present it. These are not pages of criticism nor of philosophy. Nor are they merely literary pages. They are pages that have to do with one of the enlargements of life. They are without pretence beyond my desire to add my own definition in poetry’s many existing definitions. …WALLACE STEVENS

[quasimodo1]

Wallace Stevens: from UNCOLLECTED PROSE… RAOUL DUFY Raoul Dufy’s sudden death in March, 1953, was like a rip in the rainbow. His work for the lithographs in the present portfolio had been completed. The collection was far advanced toward its appearance. It was based on his largest and most significant fresco. It had engaged him seriously for a long period of time. He regarded it as the typical and sympathetic undertaking and he looked forward to its publication as a kind of radiant realization. But this realization of the spirit of the artist was destined to be a realization on the part of others after his death. The work reveals Dufy, on a scale beyond comparison with anything else he has done, exploiting, as artist, the world we know and the world of what we know, which are always the same. It is a surface of prose changeable with the luster of poetry and thought. … {excerpt}
{ http://www.dufy.com/ }

[stlukesguild]

Raoul Dufy was a rather minor artist from the turn of the century. He merged the brilliant colors of Matisse (without his formal innovations) with the fluidity and sparkle of Chagall, and something of the plein air picture postcards views of Paris and the south of France. He is something of a light-weight, populist hawking idealized images of Paris, French Hotel interiors, still life, artist's studios, and boat filled harbors in Nice or Cannes... imagery all popularized by the great French Modernists... especially Matisse. While he is not a major figure in the history of art, his work is not without a degree of charm. It is ever joyful... full of sparkle and color... with an ever exquisite light touch that could only come from a Frenchman:

[quasimodo1]

From STEVENS, COLLECTED POETRY & PROSE: from THE NECESSARY ANGEL: from RELATIONS BETWEEN POETRY & PAINTING: ________________________________ …This reality is, also, the momentous world of poetry. Its instantaneities are the familiar intelligence of poets, although it has been the intelligence of another ambiance. Simone Weil in LA PESANTEUR ET LA GRACE has a chapter on what she calls decreation. She says that decreation is making pass from the created to the uncreated, but that destruction is making pass from the created to nothingness. Modern reality is a reality of decreation, in which our revelations are not the revelations of belief, but the precious portents of our own powers. The greatest truth we could hope to discover, in whatever field we discovered it, is that man’s truth is the final resolution of everything. Poets and painters alike today make that assumption and this is what gives them the validity and serious dignity that become them as among those that seek wisdom, seek understanding. I am elevating this a little, because I am trying to generalize and because it is incredible that one should speak of the aspirations of the last two or three generations without a degree of elevation. Sometimes it seems the other way. Sometimes we hear it said that in the eighteenth century there were no poets and that the painters --- Chardin, Fragonard, Watteau -- were elegants and nothing more; that in the nineteenth century the last great poet was the man that looked most like one and that the whole Pierian sodality had better have been fed to the dogs. It occasionally seems like that today. It must seem as it may. In the logic of events, the only wrong would be to attempt to falsify the logic, to be disloyal to the truth. It would be tragic not to realize the extent of man’s dependence on them has been questioned, as if the discipline of the arts was in no sense a moral discipline. We have not to discuss that here. It is enough to have brought poetry and painting into relation as sources of our present conception of reality, without asserting that they are the sole sources, and as supports of a kind of life, which it seems to be worth living, with their support, even if doing so is only a stage in the endless study of an existence, which is the heroic subject of all study. {excerpt and ending of the essay}

[quasimodo1]

[Virgil]

Oh is that what she looked like. I wonder what year that was taken?

[quasimodo1]

--- http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/06/ob...er-s-work.html

[Virgil]

Wow, Quasi. Are all these pictures now on the internet? Cool.

[quasimodo1]

[Virgil]

Stevens is such a big man compared to Frost. I wonder how tall Stevens was. Or was Frost short?