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The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
This definitive poetry collection, originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens on his 75th birthday, contains:
- "Harmonium"
- "Ideas of Order"
- "The Man With the Blue Guitar"
- "Parts of the World"
- "Transport Summer"
- "The Auroras of Autumn"
- "The Rock"
- "Harmonium"
- "Ideas of Order"
- "The Man With the Blue Guitar"
- "Parts of the World"
- "Transport Summer"
- "The Auroras of Autumn"
- "The Rock"
602 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1954
About the author
Wallace Stevens
158 books461 followersWallace Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. His first major publication (four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at the age of thirty-five, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry and exchanged sonnets with George Santayana, with whom he was close through much of his life. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned fifty. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, who called Stevens the "best and most representative" American poet of the time, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such a late flowering of artistic genius.
Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel; after a long courtship, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie.
A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems.
After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel; after a long courtship, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie.
A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems.
After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 190 reviews
June 1, 2011
i fell in love with two men in my undergrad senior seminar. it was on wallace stevens and t.s. eliot.
the way i loved both of these writers hurt. (i'll set eliot aside for another time).
stevens kills me when he uses very innocent symbols - making ice cream, in "the emperor of ice cream", for instance - to offset the tragedy that's occurring. front-loaded with the promise of the sugar stuff, it seems like the poem will go somewhere happy, maybe to a coming of age resolultion.
but it's not that simple. everything wallace does gets so much darker. when you find out why the ice cream is being made, what it's for, everything changes. and it's something that's resonated in my skull since the day i read it. when i teach this poem to students in my undergrad class, they struggle. they struggle for entire class periods. and when i explain it, they look as if they've been punched.
wallace turns the reader into a puzzle solver. each word is a piece and even if the pieces appear to fit one way, you must do a bit of thinking before you can begin to understand the picture that's really unfolding. it's an incredible skill. it still awes me.
my two favorite pieces from this collection were obviously "the emperor of ice cream" and the other was "the idea of order at key west" which i think i loved so much because it reminded me of the end of "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" by eliot. the sea, the singing, the questions posed - but i think that's up to the reader to figure out.
regardless, i love this collection. i deeply love this collection.
the way i loved both of these writers hurt. (i'll set eliot aside for another time).
stevens kills me when he uses very innocent symbols - making ice cream, in "the emperor of ice cream", for instance - to offset the tragedy that's occurring. front-loaded with the promise of the sugar stuff, it seems like the poem will go somewhere happy, maybe to a coming of age resolultion.
but it's not that simple. everything wallace does gets so much darker. when you find out why the ice cream is being made, what it's for, everything changes. and it's something that's resonated in my skull since the day i read it. when i teach this poem to students in my undergrad class, they struggle. they struggle for entire class periods. and when i explain it, they look as if they've been punched.
wallace turns the reader into a puzzle solver. each word is a piece and even if the pieces appear to fit one way, you must do a bit of thinking before you can begin to understand the picture that's really unfolding. it's an incredible skill. it still awes me.
my two favorite pieces from this collection were obviously "the emperor of ice cream" and the other was "the idea of order at key west" which i think i loved so much because it reminded me of the end of "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" by eliot. the sea, the singing, the questions posed - but i think that's up to the reader to figure out.
regardless, i love this collection. i deeply love this collection.
September 29, 2015
In my life no poet has meant more to me than Wallace Stevens. It took years of blinking incomprehension before I really found an entry point (actually, I highly recommend the wikipedia page for Harmonium, a great introduction). He doesn't make things too easy, and yet once he opens up to you you can practically make your home inside his oeuvre. An immensely generous poet, Stevens teaches you how to be alone, a lesson it's necessary to learn and re-learn your whole life.
From "Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction":
As if the waves at last were never broken
As if the language suddenly, with ease,
Said things it had laboriously spoken.
From "Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction":
As if the waves at last were never broken
As if the language suddenly, with ease,
Said things it had laboriously spoken.
November 11, 2019
این برف نیست که پَر است،کاغذ است
شعر شدیدتر تازیانه میزند تا باد.
استیونس چشمیست در جستوجو. فرقی نمیکند در لوور یا هرجا دست میگذارد و شی را بیرون میکشد و مینامدش و به سیاق خود به شعر بدل میکند.
<< اما چشمها انسانهاییاند در کف دست>>
از سی سالگی و انتشار اولیّن دفتر شعر،شعری نسروده و به گالریها و موزهها رفته و به جمعِ آثار هنری پرداخته و بعد از شصت یا هفتاد سالگی بهترین مجموعه شعرهایش را منتشر میکند.[مردمکی سرشار و خسته].
.
و "فضا" کلمهی موردعلاقهی اوست.آنجا که فرمها و محتواها در هم گماند و شعر به نقاشیای آبستره و قابل لمس تبدیل میشود.
<<ای تاریکی،ای هیچیی بعد از مرگِ انسان
بگیر و نگهدار او را در عمیقترین فضا_
هستی،طوفانِ مادی،بعدی که به آن باور داریم بدون باور،ماوراءِ باور>>
شعرهای استیونس بیش از هر چیز به نقاشیهای خوان میرو شباهت دارد.رنگهایی سرگردان. آبی و لکهای سیاه.
او بارها در خود شعرهایش به تعریف شعر میپردازد و شعرها را چیزی فراتر از احساس میداند.جوششی از اعماق.عمیق همچون ویتمن و به مانندِ این شعر استیونس:
به صدا در میآورد سیمی درهم پیچیده
که گذر میدهد
اصوات را از میان حقایقِ ناگهانی
پینوشت: از زیباترین مجموعه شعرهایی بود که خوندم.ترجمه هم تقریبا خوبه.اگرچه شعرهای استوینس هم مثل شعرهای اشبری ترجمهی خاصی میطلبه.امیدوارم بیشتر ازش ترجمه بشه و امیدوارم یک روز شعرهای "آن کارسون" هم ترجمه بشه که البته بعیده و دور.
شعر شدیدتر تازیانه میزند تا باد.
استیونس چشمیست در جستوجو. فرقی نمیکند در لوور یا هرجا دست میگذارد و شی را بیرون میکشد و مینامدش و به سیاق خود به شعر بدل میکند.
<< اما چشمها انسانهاییاند در کف دست>>
از سی سالگی و انتشار اولیّن دفتر شعر،شعری نسروده و به گالریها و موزهها رفته و به جمعِ آثار هنری پرداخته و بعد از شصت یا هفتاد سالگی بهترین مجموعه شعرهایش را منتشر میکند.[مردمکی سرشار و خسته].
.
و "فضا" کلمهی موردعلاقهی اوست.آنجا که فرمها و محتواها در هم گماند و شعر به نقاشیای آبستره و قابل لمس تبدیل میشود.
<<ای تاریکی،ای هیچیی بعد از مرگِ انسان
بگیر و نگهدار او را در عمیقترین فضا_
هستی،طوفانِ مادی،بعدی که به آن باور داریم بدون باور،ماوراءِ باور>>
شعرهای استیونس بیش از هر چیز به نقاشیهای خوان میرو شباهت دارد.رنگهایی سرگردان. آبی و لکهای سیاه.
او بارها در خود شعرهایش به تعریف شعر میپردازد و شعرها را چیزی فراتر از احساس میداند.جوششی از اعماق.عمیق همچون ویتمن و به مانندِ این شعر استیونس:
به صدا در میآورد سیمی درهم پیچیده
که گذر میدهد
اصوات را از میان حقایقِ ناگهانی
پینوشت: از زیباترین مجموعه شعرهایی بود که خوندم.ترجمه هم تقریبا خوبه.اگرچه شعرهای استوینس هم مثل شعرهای اشبری ترجمهی خاصی میطلبه.امیدوارم بیشتر ازش ترجمه بشه و امیدوارم یک روز شعرهای "آن کارسون" هم ترجمه بشه که البته بعیده و دور.
October 4, 2019
The Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
This comprehensive collection of more than three hundred poems won Stevens the National Book Award for Poetry in 1955. He also won the Pulitzer and was a widely respected poet.
Stevens is considered a master of the blank verse. Nearly all of his poems have consistent meter but lack obvious rhyme schemes.
To read Stevens poetry out loud is music, it is astonishing how beautiful his meter sounds.
Of course figuring out what Stevens is actually saying can be an exercise in frustration for a novice like myself. The first lines of so many poems, particularly in the Harmonium series of poems, start out with promise but often provide no context or closure, lacking the clarity you see with Hall or Sandburg’s poetry for example.
In a word Steven’s poetry and messaging is quite “opaque”. Nevertheless I think one can learn a lot about his style in this collection.
3.5 stars
This comprehensive collection of more than three hundred poems won Stevens the National Book Award for Poetry in 1955. He also won the Pulitzer and was a widely respected poet.
Stevens is considered a master of the blank verse. Nearly all of his poems have consistent meter but lack obvious rhyme schemes.
To read Stevens poetry out loud is music, it is astonishing how beautiful his meter sounds.
Of course figuring out what Stevens is actually saying can be an exercise in frustration for a novice like myself. The first lines of so many poems, particularly in the Harmonium series of poems, start out with promise but often provide no context or closure, lacking the clarity you see with Hall or Sandburg’s poetry for example.
In a word Steven’s poetry and messaging is quite “opaque”. Nevertheless I think one can learn a lot about his style in this collection.
3.5 stars
November 5, 2015
Autumn Refrain
The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never -- shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never -- shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.
Wallace Stevens, Ideas of Order (1936).
The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never -- shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never -- shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.
Wallace Stevens, Ideas of Order (1936).
Currently reading
May 3, 2008I don't know how to rate this, or how to review it. It's like TS Eliot. 8 poems out of 10 either make me feel stupid or make me hate poetry. The other 2 knock me flat on my back.
Read
June 10, 2012all night. once. i stayed up and read this book cover to cover. looking for a poem i thought i remembered about dancing.
April 2, 2010
For Easter. A friend told me this is maybe the best poem in the English language, quoting bits of it as we were driving along. Had to look it up. Here it is.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Sunday Morning
1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.
3
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
4
She says, 'I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?'
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.
5
She says, 'But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.'
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feel shall manifest.
8
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, 'The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.'
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
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 darkness, on extended wings.
Notes
1] In a letter to L. W. Payne, Jr., of March 31, 1928, Stevens draws attention to the poem's "paganism" (Letters, 250).
peignoir: loose dressing gown of a woman.
3] cockatoo: colourful and noisy parrot.
5] The Christian mass remembers Christ's crucifixion by sharing his body and blood as bread and wine with the faithful.
15] sepulchre: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre shelters the tomb in which Jesus' body was laid on Good Friday and discovered missing on the Sunday afterward.
31] Jove: Jupiter.
35] hinds: farm workers, here shepherds.
38] star: pointer to the birthplace of the Christ-child, as seen by the shepherds and the three kings.
52] chimera: bad dream, literally a she-monster whose body, in Greek myth, consists of a goat's torso, a lion's head, and a snake's tail.
54] gat: betook themselves.
74] disregarded plate: Stevens had to explain to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, that he meant, by this, family silverware that was no longer used (Letters,183-84).
100] serafin: seraphim, angels.
119] undulations: wave-like rise-and-falls.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Sunday Morning
1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.
3
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
4
She says, 'I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?'
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.
5
She says, 'But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.'
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feel shall manifest.
8
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, 'The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.'
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
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 darkness, on extended wings.
Notes
1] In a letter to L. W. Payne, Jr., of March 31, 1928, Stevens draws attention to the poem's "paganism" (Letters, 250).
peignoir: loose dressing gown of a woman.
3] cockatoo: colourful and noisy parrot.
5] The Christian mass remembers Christ's crucifixion by sharing his body and blood as bread and wine with the faithful.
15] sepulchre: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre shelters the tomb in which Jesus' body was laid on Good Friday and discovered missing on the Sunday afterward.
31] Jove: Jupiter.
35] hinds: farm workers, here shepherds.
38] star: pointer to the birthplace of the Christ-child, as seen by the shepherds and the three kings.
52] chimera: bad dream, literally a she-monster whose body, in Greek myth, consists of a goat's torso, a lion's head, and a snake's tail.
54] gat: betook themselves.
74] disregarded plate: Stevens had to explain to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, that he meant, by this, family silverware that was no longer used (Letters,183-84).
100] serafin: seraphim, angels.
119] undulations: wave-like rise-and-falls.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
January 2, 2017
This is the type of book I read at 3 am when I can't sleep. Stevens' poetry just makes me feel so calm, even though the content in his poetry is not in fact anywhere near the realms of calm. Overall, I would say, the content is hard-hitting. I'm not going to pretend I understand all of his ideas and everything he says- I definitely don't. A lot of these poems leave me feeling like an idiot. But when I am able to figure something out, it all starts to click and I am left with a lump in my throat. Although I don't necessarily understand everything when it comes to this collection, I think that it is a good thing. It just shows the high level of his talent manages to knock me off my feet.
Well, anyway, I got my first peak of this collection at uni. I was so intrigued by it that I bought it during winter break. While reading it I found out one of my professors is an editor of the edition that I bought. Rad. But also, the thing is, (and I have thought this many times before,) uni can only teach you so many things. I learned much more about Stevens' poetry by reading it myself than what I learned from uni. Like, without reading basically this whole collection, I would have never learned that Stevens is, for the most part, a Romantic. He's a lot like Wordsworth, I think. He inherits so many of the Romantic feelings, ideas and philosophies but he still manages to stay modern at the same time. I am obsessed with the Romantic poets so in my mind, that's what makes him stand out. I love the fact that he manages to tie modernism and Romanticism together, it is a real treat for me to read. Even though it's not really talked about, I would say my favorite poem of his is "Another Weeping Woman". It is so quick and beautiful and earnest and a good poem to read when you lose one of your loved ones.
Over the past couple of years I have really warmed up to poetry. I'm not a huge American lit person in general but I always tell people that Stevens is one of my favorites, if not my favorite American poet. Everything about his work seems so personal, like when you're reading it, it feels like he is speaking directly to you. It feels so natural but honestly nothing about reading his poetry is easy. It is tough to figure out. But I enjoyed taking the time to sit down and try to hypothesize all that is going on in his works. He is dark, so dark and yet manages to feel so light, so beautiful. He delivers the best of both worlds in my eyes and that's why I will revisit this collection again and again and again. It never stops being so hideous and so beautiful at the same time.
Well, anyway, I got my first peak of this collection at uni. I was so intrigued by it that I bought it during winter break. While reading it I found out one of my professors is an editor of the edition that I bought. Rad. But also, the thing is, (and I have thought this many times before,) uni can only teach you so many things. I learned much more about Stevens' poetry by reading it myself than what I learned from uni. Like, without reading basically this whole collection, I would have never learned that Stevens is, for the most part, a Romantic. He's a lot like Wordsworth, I think. He inherits so many of the Romantic feelings, ideas and philosophies but he still manages to stay modern at the same time. I am obsessed with the Romantic poets so in my mind, that's what makes him stand out. I love the fact that he manages to tie modernism and Romanticism together, it is a real treat for me to read. Even though it's not really talked about, I would say my favorite poem of his is "Another Weeping Woman". It is so quick and beautiful and earnest and a good poem to read when you lose one of your loved ones.
Over the past couple of years I have really warmed up to poetry. I'm not a huge American lit person in general but I always tell people that Stevens is one of my favorites, if not my favorite American poet. Everything about his work seems so personal, like when you're reading it, it feels like he is speaking directly to you. It feels so natural but honestly nothing about reading his poetry is easy. It is tough to figure out. But I enjoyed taking the time to sit down and try to hypothesize all that is going on in his works. He is dark, so dark and yet manages to feel so light, so beautiful. He delivers the best of both worlds in my eyes and that's why I will revisit this collection again and again and again. It never stops being so hideous and so beautiful at the same time.
December 9, 2023
Supreme Fiction
Uno dei più grandi poeti del ‘900 era un assicuratore (come Kafka). Gestiva sinistri dall’ufficio legale di una delle più grandi compagnie di assicurazione, in cui fece carriera scalandone i vertici e in cui lavorò fino alla fine dei suoi giorni (diversamente da Kafka).
Pensava e costruiva le sue stanze nel tragitto a piedi tra la sua casa di Hartford, Connecticut, e l’ufficio, se le appuntava in appunti leggibili solo dalla sua segretaria a cui giunto in ufficio passava i pizzini per la messa in buona.
Le sue composizioni sono il frutto di una mente eccitata ed eccitante (thrilling mind, come l’ha definita il New Yorker), astratte per lo più e spesso ostiche da penetrare e pertanto molto appaganti quando se ne riesce a cogliere qualche barlume o riusciamo a darne una nostra interpretazione, più o meno plausibile.
Sua moglie, con la saggezza delle donne che ci riportano con i piedi per terra, gli disse una volta a proposito di una poesia che avrebbe dovuto leggere ad un evento, che il pubblico non avrebbe capito nulla. Lui non se ne curava e andava avanti, fisicamente possente, con la calma e sicurezza di una grande transatlantico in mezzo all’oceano.
Alla ricerca indefessa di una chiave di lettura di questa vita di cui attraversiamo tutte le stagioni - le sue raccolte principali si richiamano esplicitamente o meno alle quattro stagioni - tutto un equilibrio tra immaginazione e e realtà necessaria, alla ricerca di un qualche ordine, un senso, un’armonia interiore (harmonium e il titolo della sua prima e più famosa raccolta).
E’ stato bello passare questo 2023 con Wallace. Pensare di camminare assieme a lui, ordinare un martini ed un astice in umido al Canoe Club di Hartford, godere del sole della Florida, incidentalmente fare a cazzotti con Hemingway (per davvero).
Jasper Johns, The Seasons, 1987, MOMA, serie di acqueforti che illustrano un’edizione di poesie di WS; l’inverno è ispirato da L’uomo di neve
L'UOMO DI NEVE
Si deve avere una mente d'inverno
per guardare il gelo e i rami
dei pini incrostati di neve,
e avere freddo da molto tempo
per vedere i ginepri irti di ghiaccio,
gli abeti ruvidi nel luccichio lontano
del sole di gennaio, e non pensare
a una pena nel suono del vento,
nel suono di poche foglie,
che é il suono della terra
percorsa dallo stesso vento
che soffia nello stesso nudo luogo
per l'ascoltatore, che ascolta nella neve
e, nulla in sé, vede
nulla che non sia lì, e il nulla che è.
David Hockney, "The Old Guitarist" da "The Blue Guitar", 1976–77, MOMA. Dall’omonima raccolta di WS (e da P.Picasso)
IDEA DELL?ORDINE A KEY WEST
...
Dimmi, se lo sai, Ramon Fernandez,
perché, quando il canto finì e ci dirigemmo
verso la città, dimmi perché le luci gelide,
le luci nelle barche da pesca all’ancora,
mentre scendeva la notte, oscillando nell’aria,
si impossessarono della notte e si spartirono il mare,
fissando zone luminose e poli ardenti,
disponendo, approfondendo, incantando la notte.
Oh benedetta furia di ordine, pallido Ramon,
furia del creatore di ordinare le parole del mare,
le parole dei portali profumati e stellari,
e di noi stessi e delle nostre origini,
in suoni più acuti, in confini più spettrali.
Wallace Stevens Walk, Hartford Connecticut, il cammino è marcato con pietre in cui è incisa “13 Modi di guardare un merlo”
QUESTA SOLITUDINE DI CATARATTE
…
Voleva che il fiume continuasse a scorrere allo stesso modo, seguitasse a scorrere. Voleva camminarvi accanto,
sotto i platani, sotto una luna inchiodata.
Voleva che il cuore smettesse di battere e la mente riposasse
in una realizzazione permanente, senza anatre selvatiche o monti che non erano monti, solo per sapere come sarebbe stato,
solo per sapere come si sarebbe sentito, affrancato dalla distruzione,
ad essere un uomo di bronzo e respirare sotto l'arcaico lapis,
senza le oscillazioni del viavai planetario,
respirare il suo respiro bronzeo nell'azzurrino centro del tempo.
Claes Oldenburg, Sneaker Lace in Landscape with Palm Trees, 1990-91, ispirato dalla raccolta di poesie di WS composta dalla figlia Holly “The Palm at the end of the mind”
DEL MERO ESSERE
La palma alla fine della mente,
oltre l’ultimo pensiero, sorge
nella distanza bronzea,
un uccello dalle piume d’oro
canta nella palma, senza senso umano,
senza sentimento umano, un canto strano.
Sai allora che non è la ragione
a renderci felici o infelici.
L’uccello canta. Le piume splendono.
La palma svetta al limite dello spazio.
Il vento si muove piano nei rami.
Le piume di fuoco ciondolano giù.
August 3, 2020
روانپریش در کوهستان
دستان قصابی بود
به هم فشردشان و خون
بیرون جهید از لابهلای انگشتها
و ریخت روی زمین
و از پی آن در شب، باد ایسلند و باد سیلان به هم رسیدند. قبضه کردند ذهن مرا قبضه کردند و به چنگ گرفتند افکار مرا.
باد سیاه دریا
و باد سبز چرخیدند به دور من
خون ذهن فروریخت بر زمین.من به خواب رفتم
اما درون من کسی بود که می توانست برسد تا ابرها
می توانست این باد ها را لمس کند
تا بزند، بشکند و بریزد پایین،
می توانست بالابلند بایستد در آسمان.
دستان قصابی بود
به هم فشردشان و خون
بیرون جهید از لابهلای انگشتها
و ریخت روی زمین
و از پی آن در شب، باد ایسلند و باد سیلان به هم رسیدند. قبضه کردند ذهن مرا قبضه کردند و به چنگ گرفتند افکار مرا.
باد سیاه دریا
و باد سبز چرخیدند به دور من
خون ذهن فروریخت بر زمین.من به خواب رفتم
اما درون من کسی بود که می توانست برسد تا ابرها
می توانست این باد ها را لمس کند
تا بزند، بشکند و بریزد پایین،
می توانست بالابلند بایستد در آسمان.
June 27, 2008
This book of poetry combines an earthy sensibility coupled with a philosophical speculation that appeals to me. My favorite book of poetry.
November 21, 2010
This is one of the greatest books of all time. Five stars does not do it justice. I'll always be trying to understand all of them.
Want to read
July 16, 2009Yes, Stevens' poetry needs savoring...absolutely!
January 5, 2015
Another wonderful, mostly opaque, poet. But I thoroughly enjoyed what I could understand. Stevens has a very strong philosophical bent, and his overtly humanistic stance celebrates in such bold and beautiful language the gift that every moment of life is with or without an eternal assurance. He wrote in his book Opus Posthumous, “After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption." Many people with religious sensibilities may wonder how one can appreciate life at all, or have any hope or peace, after the idea of God’s existence is no longer a plausible credence. This is a fair question, because it is really a question of how another person thinks and feels, which we should all be curious about. Poetry is the perfect medium with which to answer, and Stevens is a great poet for it. His poem Sunday Morning is a great start. The subject is a woman who chooses to skip a Sunday morning church service:
…Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun…
…Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
…There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
…that has endured
As April’s green endures… (excerpts from Sunday Morning)
Surely, to some, this might be as unsatisfying an answer as the response given by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson to an inquirer who asked about his belief regarding an afterlife: “I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.” That won’t communicate well to some who don’t have the same emotional responses, backgrounds moods, understandings, and associations that Neil has invested in such a sentiment. So, one gets a poet to translate. A good poet—with their skills of language-bending, image-amplification, and feeling-conduction—communicates emotional content beyond mere factuality in a way that can send frequencies of information and sensation across worlds and epochs to reach a person otherwise isolated from another’s view and feeling, and who may not share similar constitutions or lifestyles.
There is an undercurrent of heavy-sighed romanticism in many of the poems, which to me comes across as far too maudlin and melodramatic; but the way he wrestles with philosophical ideas like the tension between appearance and reality, and description versus impression, piqued my interest the most. He looks a matter in the eyeballs, and calls back to the rest of us convention-lubbers what we might see if we were brave enough to look directly at death, suffering, boredom, danger, beauty, and existence as it is. I truly wish I could understand more of Stevens’ poems than I did. Sometimes a line would emerge like a piece of clear sky from out a hole in a complex and clouded poem, and a message would be delivered. There are secrets there.
My favorite poems, and great ones for newbs to start with, are:
Sunday Morning (“Death is the mother of beauty.”)
Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Blackbird
Gubbinal
Evening Without Angels
A Postcard From the Volcano
The Poems of Our Climate
Dutch Graves In Bucks County
Anecdote of the Jar
**Like this review? Clicking ‘like’ lets me know someone’s reading! For more reviews, visit my blog, www.bookburningservice.blogspot.com.
…Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun…
…Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
…There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
…that has endured
As April’s green endures… (excerpts from Sunday Morning)
Surely, to some, this might be as unsatisfying an answer as the response given by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson to an inquirer who asked about his belief regarding an afterlife: “I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.” That won’t communicate well to some who don’t have the same emotional responses, backgrounds moods, understandings, and associations that Neil has invested in such a sentiment. So, one gets a poet to translate. A good poet—with their skills of language-bending, image-amplification, and feeling-conduction—communicates emotional content beyond mere factuality in a way that can send frequencies of information and sensation across worlds and epochs to reach a person otherwise isolated from another’s view and feeling, and who may not share similar constitutions or lifestyles.
There is an undercurrent of heavy-sighed romanticism in many of the poems, which to me comes across as far too maudlin and melodramatic; but the way he wrestles with philosophical ideas like the tension between appearance and reality, and description versus impression, piqued my interest the most. He looks a matter in the eyeballs, and calls back to the rest of us convention-lubbers what we might see if we were brave enough to look directly at death, suffering, boredom, danger, beauty, and existence as it is. I truly wish I could understand more of Stevens’ poems than I did. Sometimes a line would emerge like a piece of clear sky from out a hole in a complex and clouded poem, and a message would be delivered. There are secrets there.
My favorite poems, and great ones for newbs to start with, are:
Sunday Morning (“Death is the mother of beauty.”)
Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Blackbird
Gubbinal
Evening Without Angels
A Postcard From the Volcano
The Poems of Our Climate
Dutch Graves In Bucks County
Anecdote of the Jar
**Like this review? Clicking ‘like’ lets me know someone’s reading! For more reviews, visit my blog, www.bookburningservice.blogspot.com.
July 31, 2013
I'm marking this book as "read," although I'm not sure I've read every poem. This is certainly not a book which can be read cover-to-cover in a few sittings, at least not by someone of my intellect.
I fell in love with Stevens' famous "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" during my freshman year in college. The images were striking and beautiful, even though I didn't understand what the poem was about. But the mystery was part of the appeal. I "understand" the poem more now, but there will always be an element of mystery to it, and to all of Stevens' poetry.
Stevens' poetry is difficult; I don't see any other way to put it. Even when he uses simple language, his word choices and sentence construction can be strange and puzzling. Here's a fairly short poem which I mostly "get," "Anecdote of the Jar":
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
I've turned to some of these poems, like "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" and those I've mentioned above, many times over the years, and derived great pleasure from them. But even the ones I don't understand fascinate me. All pleasures in life are not easy ones; some things are worth working for.
I fell in love with Stevens' famous "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" during my freshman year in college. The images were striking and beautiful, even though I didn't understand what the poem was about. But the mystery was part of the appeal. I "understand" the poem more now, but there will always be an element of mystery to it, and to all of Stevens' poetry.
Stevens' poetry is difficult; I don't see any other way to put it. Even when he uses simple language, his word choices and sentence construction can be strange and puzzling. Here's a fairly short poem which I mostly "get," "Anecdote of the Jar":
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
I've turned to some of these poems, like "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" and those I've mentioned above, many times over the years, and derived great pleasure from them. But even the ones I don't understand fascinate me. All pleasures in life are not easy ones; some things are worth working for.
May 1, 2011
Stevens wrote poetry like a jeweler cuts diamonds; his language is musical to the ear and prismatic in the mind's eye. He often writes about the power of art--specifically poetry--to transform Reality.
She sang beyond the genius of the sea . . .
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.....
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
from "The Idea of Order at Key West"
She sang beyond the genius of the sea . . .
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.....
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
from "The Idea of Order at Key West"
Read
March 31, 2022I doubt I'm the first person to make this comparison, but Stevens reminds me a great deal of Charles Ives (vague memories of Guy Davenport maybe making this comparison as well?). He was a successful executive who, in his off-hours, wrote some of the wildest verse America has ever seen, in a manner completely out of step with what is often regarded as “American poetry” as it developed (a straight path through Emerson, Dickinson, and Whitman, bottoming out with the middlebrow dullardry of Robert Frost). He is weird, reflective, deconstructing the form as he goes, and an American individualist in the absolute best sense of that term.
November 16, 2009
very fond of the harmonium and ideas of order collections.
some particular favorites:
"another weeping woman"
"from the misery of don joost"
"the worms at heaven's gate"
"anecdote of men by the thousand"
"of the surface of things"
"the place of the solitaires"
"the curtains in the house of the metaphysician"
"six significant landscapes"
"tattoo"
"the wind shifts"
"farewell to florida"
"the idea of order at key west"
"anglais mort à florence"
some particular favorites:
"another weeping woman"
"from the misery of don joost"
"the worms at heaven's gate"
"anecdote of men by the thousand"
"of the surface of things"
"the place of the solitaires"
"the curtains in the house of the metaphysician"
"six significant landscapes"
"tattoo"
"the wind shifts"
"farewell to florida"
"the idea of order at key west"
"anglais mort à florence"
August 27, 2021
I finished this Swann's way, "a little at a time but often." It would be indecent of me to attempt any commentary, my poetic acumen being just enough to persist in reading it. The whole may be elusive--a figment of imagination!--but there are lines in which all life dwells, legible and microcosmic as DNA. Out of a ponderous morass of scrambled details and intrusive demands something transplendent suddenly crystallizes and just as suddenly vanishes. It was Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno that led me here. Thanks, Bob, hope you're well and mere seconds from finishing that new translation of Negative Dialectics for which we can only wait a few more decades. Which is a confession that I shoehorned Stevens' poetic practice into Adorno's aesthetic theory. If it didn't fit, I wore it anyway and would happily stumble through it again, should the murderous obstacle course of existence be long enough to include such a merciful rest.
December 29, 2017
A young man in his early teenage years realizes already that his mental visions far exceed the possibilities of reality. What he feels only feels right to him. Outside of his self there is no basis for understanding, and no point. Even when the things his mind conjures come true it’s like watching a movie of what happens, and nothing is ever as good as it is in his imagination. His mental world grows.
College, and the pressure from an imaginationless father to become a man. Harvard is the battleground where men will survive and faggots will be exposed. He continues to write poetry, however, because following your gut is what a man does. When he graduates he writes journalism. There is some measure of respectability in writing if it’s writing the news.
Failure. What if he was wrong the whole time? Masculinity. Poetry. His dad shakes his head, the wrinkled skin of his face half-hidden in shadow as he rocks in his chair, by the window, the curtain moving, somewhere in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Get a job. He does. He’s smart so law school and clerkships come easily. He’s big and ruddy-looking, with a big appetite, and a hearty laugh. His boss asks him to come with him to Canada. To go hunting. Over the gridiron of ice he sees Harvard revealed again, as a second chance, and this time he’s ready to greet every discomfort as an affirmation of the man he truly is. He hikes. He traps, and kills game. At night by the fire under polar sky he listens to their guide tell stories of the old days and these yarns are better than any of the classics he read in his childhood or in college. The fire is intoxicating. As he looks into it something is stirred within him.
The night before they are to return to New York, while everyone is sleeping, he sets off into the trackless snow alone. Through a dense thicket a meadow and an interminable quiet. A light illumines the treetops suddenly. The sky is overtaken by swaths of color he’s only seen in deep meditation with his eyes closed. The field of snow glows. He feels afraid.
He returns to New York, finishes law school. A secure job at an indemnity company is offered him, which he accepts. In the same manner he accepts a bride. The days are spent taking meticulous record, which doesn’t take long, and at lunch he goes on walks. Scribbles in notebooks. At night after supper, in his reading room, next to the jade lantern, he imagines. Sometimes the light falls through the curtains. Sometimes the wind rattles the clapboards.
Years go by. His scribblings pile up. Some are published. The National Book Award, The Frost Award, The Pulitzer. The accolades come from the same world of the indemnity corporation. The mental world never relents, never seems less real. As his age grows so does the shadow of the rock, until he is subsumed by it, and we are left with the notations in the notebooks, the explanations and descriptions of what he has seen.
College, and the pressure from an imaginationless father to become a man. Harvard is the battleground where men will survive and faggots will be exposed. He continues to write poetry, however, because following your gut is what a man does. When he graduates he writes journalism. There is some measure of respectability in writing if it’s writing the news.
Failure. What if he was wrong the whole time? Masculinity. Poetry. His dad shakes his head, the wrinkled skin of his face half-hidden in shadow as he rocks in his chair, by the window, the curtain moving, somewhere in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Get a job. He does. He’s smart so law school and clerkships come easily. He’s big and ruddy-looking, with a big appetite, and a hearty laugh. His boss asks him to come with him to Canada. To go hunting. Over the gridiron of ice he sees Harvard revealed again, as a second chance, and this time he’s ready to greet every discomfort as an affirmation of the man he truly is. He hikes. He traps, and kills game. At night by the fire under polar sky he listens to their guide tell stories of the old days and these yarns are better than any of the classics he read in his childhood or in college. The fire is intoxicating. As he looks into it something is stirred within him.
The night before they are to return to New York, while everyone is sleeping, he sets off into the trackless snow alone. Through a dense thicket a meadow and an interminable quiet. A light illumines the treetops suddenly. The sky is overtaken by swaths of color he’s only seen in deep meditation with his eyes closed. The field of snow glows. He feels afraid.
He returns to New York, finishes law school. A secure job at an indemnity company is offered him, which he accepts. In the same manner he accepts a bride. The days are spent taking meticulous record, which doesn’t take long, and at lunch he goes on walks. Scribbles in notebooks. At night after supper, in his reading room, next to the jade lantern, he imagines. Sometimes the light falls through the curtains. Sometimes the wind rattles the clapboards.
Years go by. His scribblings pile up. Some are published. The National Book Award, The Frost Award, The Pulitzer. The accolades come from the same world of the indemnity corporation. The mental world never relents, never seems less real. As his age grows so does the shadow of the rock, until he is subsumed by it, and we are left with the notations in the notebooks, the explanations and descriptions of what he has seen.
Read
May 25, 2022"The River of Rivers in Connecticut
There is a great river this side of Stygia
Before one comes to the first black cataracts
And trees that lack the intelligence of trees.
In that river, far this side of Stygia,
The mere flowing of the water is a gayety,
Flashing and flashing in the sun. On its banks,
No shadow walks. The river is fateful,
Like the last one. But there is no ferryman.
He could not bend against its propelling force.
It is not to be seen beneath the appearances
That tell of it. The steeple at Farmington
Stands glistening and Haddam shines and sways.
It is the third commonness with light and air,
A curriculum, a vigor, a local abstraction . . .
Call it, one more, a river, an unnamed flowing,
Space-filled, reflecting the seasons, the folk-lore
Of each of the senses; call it, again and again,
The river that flows nowhere, like a sea."
Almost every day I run on a trail along the Farmington River and see that glistening steeple.
There is a great river this side of Stygia
Before one comes to the first black cataracts
And trees that lack the intelligence of trees.
In that river, far this side of Stygia,
The mere flowing of the water is a gayety,
Flashing and flashing in the sun. On its banks,
No shadow walks. The river is fateful,
Like the last one. But there is no ferryman.
He could not bend against its propelling force.
It is not to be seen beneath the appearances
That tell of it. The steeple at Farmington
Stands glistening and Haddam shines and sways.
It is the third commonness with light and air,
A curriculum, a vigor, a local abstraction . . .
Call it, one more, a river, an unnamed flowing,
Space-filled, reflecting the seasons, the folk-lore
Of each of the senses; call it, again and again,
The river that flows nowhere, like a sea."
Almost every day I run on a trail along the Farmington River and see that glistening steeple.
May 28, 2012
I have been trying for years to get into Stevens. Finally did and he is well worth the effort. If you have tried and "put it back on the shelf" as I did, read his small book of essays "The Necessary Angel" and Helen Vendler's "Words Chosen Out of Desire". They helped me see what he was all about.
Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar" (excerpts)
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 tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar" (excerpts)
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 tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
December 27, 2013
شعر استیونس در هیچ یک از مکاتب شعر آمریکا نظیر تصویرگرایی - کوبیسم و غیره نمی گنجد و سر دو راهی هایی که ازرا پاند و الیوت از ویلیامز یا امیلی دیکنسون از ویتمن جدا می شوند، مستقیم به راهش ادامه می دهد. شعر فلسفی استیونس بین واقعیت و خیال نوسان می کند و در ردیف ناب ترین شعرهای جهان است
...
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
هان ای کوچک مردان هَدَم
چه پرندگان زرین در خیال آرید؟
هیچ آیا نبینید چه سان پرندهی سیاه
پرسه میزند گردِ ساقهای زنان اهلتان؟
...
- سیزده طریق نگریستن در پرنده ای سیاه
...
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
هان ای کوچک مردان هَدَم
چه پرندگان زرین در خیال آرید؟
هیچ آیا نبینید چه سان پرندهی سیاه
پرسه میزند گردِ ساقهای زنان اهلتان؟
...
- سیزده طریق نگریستن در پرنده ای سیاه
September 2, 2017
From pt. V of his poem "Things of August" -
'The thinker as reader reads what has been written.
He wears the words he reads to look upon
Within his being,
A crown within him of crispest diamonds.
A reddened garment falling to his feet,
A hand of light to turn the page,
A finger with a ring to guide his eye
From line to line, as we lie on the grass and listen
To that which has no speech,
The voluble intentions of the symbols,
The ghostly celebrations of the picnic,
The secretions of insight.
'The thinker as reader reads what has been written.
He wears the words he reads to look upon
Within his being,
A crown within him of crispest diamonds.
A reddened garment falling to his feet,
A hand of light to turn the page,
A finger with a ring to guide his eye
From line to line, as we lie on the grass and listen
To that which has no speech,
The voluble intentions of the symbols,
The ghostly celebrations of the picnic,
The secretions of insight.
Read
February 26, 2010When I'm feeling uninspired, I reach for this book. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is likely the best known poem, but there are many to love here. A beautiful collection.
July 4, 2016
"He wanted his heart to stop beating
And his mind to rest in a permanent realization"
I feel that as a poet Stevens always seems to be speaking directly to you. I've rarely encountered the first-person voice in his work. It's as though he has devised these poems from a place of deepest and most personal significance, and they are completed now for none other than you. His poetic voice declares and justifies its own authority -- the language is crafted beautifully and inventively in such masterful arrangement that it somehow manages to read as though it were composed effortlessly. He is both intellectually penetrating and aesthetically captivating. He synthesizes the literary voice of classic high-literature -- too often alienating in its academic and institutional role -- with the universal layman dialectic, and convincingly persuades the subject of the modern world to strive toward achieving his highest potential, and so be "A man at the centre of men," and a "final dreamer of the total dream." Stevens' poetic world is at once purely abstract and yet it never at any moment acquiesces to such poverty "as not to live in a physical world."
It's compelling to believe that Stevens actualized in his life the ideal vision of beauty described by Diotima in the Symposium as a perception of undilute Beauty, in which all objects partake without distinction in a singular and constant whole. Does Stevens, who as an artist, and as a poet who treads tirelessly the line between matter and form (while defying any definitive placement on either side) to the point of paradox, imagine himself fulfilling the role of daemon, described by Diotimus as an interlocutor between the living and the dead, thus serving as the point of tension between mortals and gods and communicating the infinite in a mediated form through the artist's self-generative process of creative production. It would appear Stevens is not altogether different from the figure named 'Berserk' whom the speaker in "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" recalls. As Berserk says to the speaker, "I set my traps in the midst of dreams," Stevens too builds his poetic craft amid the dreamscape of his unconscious, in which a meeting ground is fixed between the finite and the infinite, as the ego is both lost and recovered again, leaving the artist to attempt at transmitting the dream into his work. The dreamscape then is not a place of matter of form, of poetic form or content matter, but instead a conjunction between the two, which in their relation create something new. Lacan says that the desire for recognition always dominates the content of what is recognized; the poetic process incorporates the desire to recognize what is beyond the apparent world with whatever we may apprehend there.
Whereas bad poetry attempts to recreate its subject matter by imitating its content in a recreation of form, good poetry overlooks this binary in which the mundane image is boorishly imitated and instead cultivates a third way, a synthesis of subject matter and the idea of beauty, that does not represent anything but insists on itself as something singular and novel. In such a way, Stevens undertakes his responsibility as a poet by positioning himself repeatedly in-betwixt the dreaming world he seeks to reveal and the waking world to which he wants to reveal it. Thus he posits himself within a ternary structure compatible with the Platonic conception of beauty and the attainment of virtue through the pure embodiment of virtue as such, giving form to itself rather than mere copies, just as the poet composes his work as a testament to itself, since it already is what it aims to represent.
Like Berserk, Stevens derives from the ancient source of spiritual energy said to have taken hold of shamans, prophets, warriors, and artists. The term Berserk draws the obvious parallels to Norse Berserkrgang and the word seidr which refers to an Old Norse shaman sorcery characterized by fits of uncontrollable energy that unleashed powerful frenzies of activity and creative expression. By connecting the primal source of his poetic creation with that of the Berserkr warrior, Stevens reaffirms that poetry is a destructive and compelling force that holds an authoritative and binding influence on the world, not only in the destructive interplay of masculine hegemony, but in the primal Dionysian rapture that nourishes this self-inflicted structural violence, as an electrifying friction pulsing among contesting signifiers, form and essence exerting upon and subsisting by means of each other. What Stevens does is make use of this binary by which our species as sexed beings and our reality as the locus of the signifier, and connive some work of unity in which we may for a moment annul the bridge that situates us as alienated subjects defined by what they lack, and together experience something that transcends the gap between me and you, and instead emerges as something created from out of that gap itself, where the unconscious world became conscious and the conscious world became unconscious. This is something like what I believe is an experience of the sublime.
In these unhappy he meditates a whole,
The full of fortune and the full of fate,
As if he lived all lives, that he might know,
In hall harridan, not hushful paradise,
To a haggling of wind and weather, by these lights
Like a blaze of summer straw, in winter's nick.
And his mind to rest in a permanent realization"
I feel that as a poet Stevens always seems to be speaking directly to you. I've rarely encountered the first-person voice in his work. It's as though he has devised these poems from a place of deepest and most personal significance, and they are completed now for none other than you. His poetic voice declares and justifies its own authority -- the language is crafted beautifully and inventively in such masterful arrangement that it somehow manages to read as though it were composed effortlessly. He is both intellectually penetrating and aesthetically captivating. He synthesizes the literary voice of classic high-literature -- too often alienating in its academic and institutional role -- with the universal layman dialectic, and convincingly persuades the subject of the modern world to strive toward achieving his highest potential, and so be "A man at the centre of men," and a "final dreamer of the total dream." Stevens' poetic world is at once purely abstract and yet it never at any moment acquiesces to such poverty "as not to live in a physical world."
It's compelling to believe that Stevens actualized in his life the ideal vision of beauty described by Diotima in the Symposium as a perception of undilute Beauty, in which all objects partake without distinction in a singular and constant whole. Does Stevens, who as an artist, and as a poet who treads tirelessly the line between matter and form (while defying any definitive placement on either side) to the point of paradox, imagine himself fulfilling the role of daemon, described by Diotimus as an interlocutor between the living and the dead, thus serving as the point of tension between mortals and gods and communicating the infinite in a mediated form through the artist's self-generative process of creative production. It would appear Stevens is not altogether different from the figure named 'Berserk' whom the speaker in "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" recalls. As Berserk says to the speaker, "I set my traps in the midst of dreams," Stevens too builds his poetic craft amid the dreamscape of his unconscious, in which a meeting ground is fixed between the finite and the infinite, as the ego is both lost and recovered again, leaving the artist to attempt at transmitting the dream into his work. The dreamscape then is not a place of matter of form, of poetic form or content matter, but instead a conjunction between the two, which in their relation create something new. Lacan says that the desire for recognition always dominates the content of what is recognized; the poetic process incorporates the desire to recognize what is beyond the apparent world with whatever we may apprehend there.
Whereas bad poetry attempts to recreate its subject matter by imitating its content in a recreation of form, good poetry overlooks this binary in which the mundane image is boorishly imitated and instead cultivates a third way, a synthesis of subject matter and the idea of beauty, that does not represent anything but insists on itself as something singular and novel. In such a way, Stevens undertakes his responsibility as a poet by positioning himself repeatedly in-betwixt the dreaming world he seeks to reveal and the waking world to which he wants to reveal it. Thus he posits himself within a ternary structure compatible with the Platonic conception of beauty and the attainment of virtue through the pure embodiment of virtue as such, giving form to itself rather than mere copies, just as the poet composes his work as a testament to itself, since it already is what it aims to represent.
Like Berserk, Stevens derives from the ancient source of spiritual energy said to have taken hold of shamans, prophets, warriors, and artists. The term Berserk draws the obvious parallels to Norse Berserkrgang and the word seidr which refers to an Old Norse shaman sorcery characterized by fits of uncontrollable energy that unleashed powerful frenzies of activity and creative expression. By connecting the primal source of his poetic creation with that of the Berserkr warrior, Stevens reaffirms that poetry is a destructive and compelling force that holds an authoritative and binding influence on the world, not only in the destructive interplay of masculine hegemony, but in the primal Dionysian rapture that nourishes this self-inflicted structural violence, as an electrifying friction pulsing among contesting signifiers, form and essence exerting upon and subsisting by means of each other. What Stevens does is make use of this binary by which our species as sexed beings and our reality as the locus of the signifier, and connive some work of unity in which we may for a moment annul the bridge that situates us as alienated subjects defined by what they lack, and together experience something that transcends the gap between me and you, and instead emerges as something created from out of that gap itself, where the unconscious world became conscious and the conscious world became unconscious. This is something like what I believe is an experience of the sublime.
In these unhappy he meditates a whole,
The full of fortune and the full of fate,
As if he lived all lives, that he might know,
In hall harridan, not hushful paradise,
To a haggling of wind and weather, by these lights
Like a blaze of summer straw, in winter's nick.
Want to read
October 17, 2009i have a couple of his poems on my wall in my art studio.
great poet
i mean to buy a good edition of his poetry and have not had a chance to investigate which anthology to get? any suggestions? which is the best to get?
here is a taste: my favorite Wallace poem:
The Idea of Order at Key West
Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
great poet
i mean to buy a good edition of his poetry and have not had a chance to investigate which anthology to get? any suggestions? which is the best to get?
here is a taste: my favorite Wallace poem:
The Idea of Order at Key West
Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
January 1, 2022
Wallace Stevens es de esos POETAS a los que Leopoldo María llamaría; un poeta científico.
Wallace Stevens no se aleja de lo que podríamos llamar neo-romanticismo. Al igual que Holderlin Stevens no traza diferencia entre poesía y filosofía. Aunque le daría más importancia a lo segundo. Acá también dotaría de una gran carga estética a la filosofía y viceversa.
La gran influencia de Wallace Stevens sería George Santayana.
(Conociendo la ideas de Santayana se comprende de manera más amplia la poesía de Wallace Stevens.)
La concepción de la estética de Santayana marcaría la propia concepción de la estética que Stevens trabajaría a lo largo de su obra. Stevens encontraría en las ideas filosóficas de Santayana el vehículo e incluso quizá el sustento de su concepción poética.
Es clara la obsesión por la imaginación, la razón y la realidad.
Obsesión que una y otra vez se repite en sus poemas. Poemas abstractos, difíciles, densos, pero con una sensibilidad bestial, propia de Wallace Stevens.
Se dice de Wallace Stevens que es un poeta para poetas. Lo cierto es que su poética no es fácil, requiere de la disposición del lector.
La poética de Wallace Stevens se caracteriza por contener una genialidad enorme, una lucidez y una sensibilidad bestial. En mucho de sus poemas se detiene a pensar la realidad y la imaginación, por medio de la razón, ya que hace falta mucho de esto para imaginarse la realidad. Varios poema están construido en base de paralelismos y perspectivas.
En donde representa el movimiento continuo entre lo real y lo imaginario, lo exterior y lo interior, la oscuridad y la luz, la lengua y el silencio.
En fin, Wallace Stevens pertenece a esos pocos poetas en alcanzar una POÉTICA total.
«The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream».
Wallace Stevens no se aleja de lo que podríamos llamar neo-romanticismo. Al igual que Holderlin Stevens no traza diferencia entre poesía y filosofía. Aunque le daría más importancia a lo segundo. Acá también dotaría de una gran carga estética a la filosofía y viceversa.
La gran influencia de Wallace Stevens sería George Santayana.
(Conociendo la ideas de Santayana se comprende de manera más amplia la poesía de Wallace Stevens.)
La concepción de la estética de Santayana marcaría la propia concepción de la estética que Stevens trabajaría a lo largo de su obra. Stevens encontraría en las ideas filosóficas de Santayana el vehículo e incluso quizá el sustento de su concepción poética.
Es clara la obsesión por la imaginación, la razón y la realidad.
Obsesión que una y otra vez se repite en sus poemas. Poemas abstractos, difíciles, densos, pero con una sensibilidad bestial, propia de Wallace Stevens.
Se dice de Wallace Stevens que es un poeta para poetas. Lo cierto es que su poética no es fácil, requiere de la disposición del lector.
La poética de Wallace Stevens se caracteriza por contener una genialidad enorme, una lucidez y una sensibilidad bestial. En mucho de sus poemas se detiene a pensar la realidad y la imaginación, por medio de la razón, ya que hace falta mucho de esto para imaginarse la realidad. Varios poema están construido en base de paralelismos y perspectivas.
En donde representa el movimiento continuo entre lo real y lo imaginario, lo exterior y lo interior, la oscuridad y la luz, la lengua y el silencio.
En fin, Wallace Stevens pertenece a esos pocos poetas en alcanzar una POÉTICA total.
«The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream».
Want to read
September 15, 2013Wallace Stevens is a fascinating poet, an aesthete whose concern is the complex, ever unravelling relation between the world and consciousness. His work evokes something of Lucretius, as well as the Romantics, but it's framed in terms of the Modernist quest, part response, part direction.
For Stevens, experiences are not encapsulated by snapshot instances, or at least, such instances are not in any form-perfect way reducible to language, whether in the moment or through later reminiscence. Language offers instead facets of meaning, ever unfolding and gaining richness through our mind's engagement with experience in a keenly phenomenological sense.
There is somewhat of a scientific direction in which to extend this chain of ideas: what is the relation between sensory information that reaches our brain and the linguistic output it offers in turn whether to communicate with others or in with ourselves in our minds. If poetry is this reduction, not only is it -beyond hard-wired directives which take precedence- infinitely mutable according to what me might learn is important, but is always conditioned to be a residue of human nature.
There's a very nice essay on Stevens which introduces this aspect (especially in relation to Romantics like Wordsworth and Keats) in Modernism: A Short Introduction. Sadly, I'm not aware of any comparisons between Stevens and Lucretius in the literature, though this seems to me a fruitful study.
For Stevens, experiences are not encapsulated by snapshot instances, or at least, such instances are not in any form-perfect way reducible to language, whether in the moment or through later reminiscence. Language offers instead facets of meaning, ever unfolding and gaining richness through our mind's engagement with experience in a keenly phenomenological sense.
There is somewhat of a scientific direction in which to extend this chain of ideas: what is the relation between sensory information that reaches our brain and the linguistic output it offers in turn whether to communicate with others or in with ourselves in our minds. If poetry is this reduction, not only is it -beyond hard-wired directives which take precedence- infinitely mutable according to what me might learn is important, but is always conditioned to be a residue of human nature.
There's a very nice essay on Stevens which introduces this aspect (especially in relation to Romantics like Wordsworth and Keats) in Modernism: A Short Introduction. Sadly, I'm not aware of any comparisons between Stevens and Lucretius in the literature, though this seems to me a fruitful study.
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