Wallace Stevens

by John Burnside

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature. Wallace Stevens was born in Pennsylvania in 1879. "Harmonium", published in 1923, became a landmark in modern American poetry with its startling imagery and meditations on art, reality and imagination. It was followed by "Ideas of Order", "The Man with the Blue Guitar and Other Poems", "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction", "Transport to Summer" and "The Necessary Angel". Stevens died in 1955.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

John Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. He left Scotland in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. Laterly, he lived in Fife with his wife and children and taught Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews.

[Author photo © Norman McBeath]

Reviews

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Brandon]

Leagues above my head. Felt like reading English poetry as someone unable to read/speak English (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Df...). Hence kinda miserable for these 130 pages.

[Alec Sieber · Rating 4 out of 5]

The early phase of Stevens's career, full of abstract images and provoking intimations of death, is essential. The final phase of his career, in which he finally succeeds in touching the truth of reality, albeit obliquely, is stunning. The middle portion, full of curious musings and meanderings and repetitions, seems a necessary but frustrating interim between the two bookends. Here's a poem from the final year of Stevens' life that blew me away:

"Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself"

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow ...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mâché ...
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry -- it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

[Esther Kozakevich · Rating 4 out of 5]

great foray into poetry, highly recommend

[Rhea · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stevens is a tough one for me, and I didn’t get Harmonium when I read it years ago. However, this is a good selection, and I get it a little more now. Stevens feels like an original mind & not one that I altogether am naturally sympathetic to, but with a little mind, heart, and effort, I think his poems pretty effective.

[Charles Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

You want to be very circumspect when approaching the poetry to Stevens. Like Joyce, the bar is set very high. I skipped in underneath it, and was not suitably impressed.

And yet I recognize his influence.

[Erin Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like visiting an old friend.

[Sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incorporates philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Good reads for the modernist era

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating and comments will reveal me to be hopelessly Plebian, but I can live with that. The introduction by Samuel French Morse claims that Stevens's poetry is always about poetry. There is a degree of support for that in the poems collected here, though the "always" is problematic. I want to suggest that his poems also often raise questions about imagination and reality, offering imagination as more real, and sometimes this is part of the poems about poetry. I don't tolerate that shit.

Imagination can be wonderful, but questioning reality and offering imagination as a superior substitute is mere frippery. I am so put off by this wherever I find it, including in many of these poems, that I cannot read them with anything but distain. Yes, I can see the talent behind these tainted ideas and thus give the book two stars instead of one, but my distain is overwhelming.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I was initially only familiar with his "Anecdote of the Jar", Stevens has quickly become one of my favourite poets (and that's not empty praise, as there are about 5 people in that category) after reading this. Shakespeare, Eliot and Stevens are the only writers whom I fully trust to know what they're doing, which makes both casual reading and analysis extremely pleasant; there's never a case of "oh, this is cool, but did he do it on purpose?", because the answer is always a confident "yes, of course he did".

[Emily]

This is one I would like to own. I checked it out from the library and felt I didn't have enough to time to read the entire collection well. For me, these poems needed reading followed by immediate re-reading.

[Dan Malinowski]

(a selected poems, UK edition, selected by John Burnside)