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POEMAS (Presentation Copy, Signed by Holly Stevens) Version De Andres Sanchez Robayne
A beautiful new edition-the first in nearly twenty years--of the work of Wallace Stevens, a founding father of contemporary American poetry, with a dazzling range of work that is at onceemotional and intellectual. As John N. Serio reminds us in his elegant introduction, Stevens has written more persuasively than any other poet about the significance of poetry itself in everyday life: "Theimagination-frequently synonymous with the act of the mind, or poetry, for Stevens--is what gives life its savor, its sanction, its sacred quality."
This rich and thoroughselection-published in the 130th anniversary year of Stevens's birth--carries us from the explosion of "Harmonium" in 1923 to the maturity of "The Auroras ofAutumn" in 1950 and the magisterial "Collected Poems" published by Knopf in 1954. To be drawn in once more by "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," "Sunday Morning,""The Idea of Order at Key West," "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," to name only a few, is to experience again the mystery of a poet who calls us to a higher music and to a deeperunderstanding of our vast and inarticulate interior world.
This essential volume for all readers of poetry reminds us of Stevens's nearly unparalleled contribution to the art form and hisunending ability to puzzle, fascinate, and delight us.
This rich and thoroughselection-published in the 130th anniversary year of Stevens's birth--carries us from the explosion of "Harmonium" in 1923 to the maturity of "The Auroras ofAutumn" in 1950 and the magisterial "Collected Poems" published by Knopf in 1954. To be drawn in once more by "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," "Sunday Morning,""The Idea of Order at Key West," "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," to name only a few, is to experience again the mystery of a poet who calls us to a higher music and to a deeperunderstanding of our vast and inarticulate interior world.
This essential volume for all readers of poetry reminds us of Stevens's nearly unparalleled contribution to the art form and hisunending ability to puzzle, fascinate, and delight us.
"From the Hardcover edition."
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Wallace Stevens
196 books495 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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December 7, 2017
Wallace Stevens' poetry is non-easy,
which likely is why to most readers,
even those of poetry, these poems
are regarded less highly than by more
academically inclined aficionados
of the art form, who are apt to rank
the man similarly to others such as
T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William
Carlos Williams.
Well, enough
of that.
This is not a final review of the book, more an introduction to such. Of particular note should be the "references" section near the end. I'll add more to the review soon, watch for messages at the top.
Stevens (1879-1955) was, in the words of poetryfoundation.org,
Stevens was not himself an academic, though he did complete three years at Harvard before withdrawing for lack of funds. After work in New York city as a journalist, he decided to devote himself full-time to literature. His father cautioned him to address his financial needs first, and Stevens in 1901 enrolled in the New York School of Law. In 1904 he was admitted to the New York Bar. After working with some legal firms he assumed a position in an insurance company in 1908. He married in 1909, and the couple had a daughter in 1924. In 1916, following various mergers of the insurance company, Stevens finally assumed a job with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and moved to Hartford. He stayed with this company, where he was appointed vice-president in 1934, and in this city, for the rest of his life, though he travelled often. (Please see the link above for additional details of Stevens' life.)
Unlike most artists, Stevens never had difficulty joining his creative life with steady employment at a white-collar job. He often composed poetry while he walked to work. For many years after he had begun publishing poetry, many co-workers knew nothing of his creative life and growing reputation. in 1955 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems.
this collection, and Stevens' published works
The collection I'm reviewing was published in 1959. I bought it in college, probably in 1964-64, in one of the two semesters that I was an English major. A number of the poems have check marks in the Contents. I assume now these were assigned or suggested for reading. Some of these have brief notes scribbled near them, probably remarks made in class by the prof.
This volume is still available used now, but it's not really worth buying in my opinion. If you want to own a copy of Steven's poems, you can get, for a few dollars more, a new copy of his Collected poems, which has a cover very similar to my book, and confused me for a while. This collection has all the poems that Stevens wanted preserved for posterity, probably 3 or 4 times as many as my volume. Otherwise, to just sample Stevens, there might be stuff online, and of course most any decent library would have something.
References
As I worked my way through this volume, I quickly collected a few things which helped.
- One that I've had perhaps as long as the poems is The Achievement of Wallace Stevens. Published in 1962, it's a collection of 19 essays by writers such as Marianne Moore, Llewelyn Powys, R.P. Blackmur, Randall Jarrell, and Samuel French Morse. It has a useful introduction, and a very extensive bibliography. Unfortunately it does not have an index listing the poems mentioned in the essays.
- An absolutely great reference that I came across at https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... is a lengthy essay by Dana Wilde, titled "An Introduction to Reading Wallace Stevens as a Poet of the Human Spirit." A PDF version can be downloaded. Highly recommended.
- I picked up a copy of A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens by Eleanor Cook. This contains a 25-page biography, a thirty-page Appendix called "How to read poetry, including Stevens", which I haven't read but should (it contains very detailed suggestions); a glossary of several of the poetic terms which Cook using in the book; a Bibliography; and an index to the poems in the main part of the book. I think all poems from the Collected works are included, organized by the collection they originally appeared in. For each poem, Cook provides what she calls a "gloss", in the sense of an explanation or commentary on text. These range from a few lines to many pages, including such info as when and where the poem was first published, commentary on the meaning or referents of the title, explication of unusual words used by Stevens, and so forth. I found a lot of the glosses to be marginally useful, but also many to be quite informative. I'm glad I have the book.
- Finally, I also have The Necessary Angel, a collection of essays that Stevens wrote in the years 1942-1951. Its subtitle is, "Essays on Reality and the Imagination." I've looked at this only very briefly.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Fall Camus
Random review: The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction about the short fiction
Next review: On Tyranny important book
Previous library review: East of Eden
Next library review: All the King's Men
which likely is why to most readers,
even those of poetry, these poems
are regarded less highly than by more
academically inclined aficionados
of the art form, who are apt to rank
the man similarly to others such as
T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William
Carlos Williams.
Well, enough
of that.
This is not a final review of the book, more an introduction to such. Of particular note should be the "references" section near the end. I'll add more to the review soon, watch for messages at the top.
Stevens (1879-1955) was, in the words of poetryfoundation.org,
one of America's most respected poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his work, Stevens was sometimes considered a willfully difficult poet. But he was also acknowledged as an eminent abstractionist and a provocative thinker, and that reputation has continued since his death. In 1975, for instance, noted literary critic Harold Bloom, whose writings on Stevens include the imposing Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, called him "the best and most representative American poet of our time."https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
Stevens was not himself an academic, though he did complete three years at Harvard before withdrawing for lack of funds. After work in New York city as a journalist, he decided to devote himself full-time to literature. His father cautioned him to address his financial needs first, and Stevens in 1901 enrolled in the New York School of Law. In 1904 he was admitted to the New York Bar. After working with some legal firms he assumed a position in an insurance company in 1908. He married in 1909, and the couple had a daughter in 1924. In 1916, following various mergers of the insurance company, Stevens finally assumed a job with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and moved to Hartford. He stayed with this company, where he was appointed vice-president in 1934, and in this city, for the rest of his life, though he travelled often. (Please see the link above for additional details of Stevens' life.)
Unlike most artists, Stevens never had difficulty joining his creative life with steady employment at a white-collar job. He often composed poetry while he walked to work. For many years after he had begun publishing poetry, many co-workers knew nothing of his creative life and growing reputation. in 1955 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems.
this collection, and Stevens' published works
The collection I'm reviewing was published in 1959. I bought it in college, probably in 1964-64, in one of the two semesters that I was an English major. A number of the poems have check marks in the Contents. I assume now these were assigned or suggested for reading. Some of these have brief notes scribbled near them, probably remarks made in class by the prof.
This volume is still available used now, but it's not really worth buying in my opinion. If you want to own a copy of Steven's poems, you can get, for a few dollars more, a new copy of his Collected poems, which has a cover very similar to my book, and confused me for a while. This collection has all the poems that Stevens wanted preserved for posterity, probably 3 or 4 times as many as my volume. Otherwise, to just sample Stevens, there might be stuff online, and of course most any decent library would have something.
References
As I worked my way through this volume, I quickly collected a few things which helped.
- One that I've had perhaps as long as the poems is The Achievement of Wallace Stevens. Published in 1962, it's a collection of 19 essays by writers such as Marianne Moore, Llewelyn Powys, R.P. Blackmur, Randall Jarrell, and Samuel French Morse. It has a useful introduction, and a very extensive bibliography. Unfortunately it does not have an index listing the poems mentioned in the essays.
- An absolutely great reference that I came across at https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... is a lengthy essay by Dana Wilde, titled "An Introduction to Reading Wallace Stevens as a Poet of the Human Spirit." A PDF version can be downloaded. Highly recommended.
- I picked up a copy of A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens by Eleanor Cook. This contains a 25-page biography, a thirty-page Appendix called "How to read poetry, including Stevens", which I haven't read but should (it contains very detailed suggestions); a glossary of several of the poetic terms which Cook using in the book; a Bibliography; and an index to the poems in the main part of the book. I think all poems from the Collected works are included, organized by the collection they originally appeared in. For each poem, Cook provides what she calls a "gloss", in the sense of an explanation or commentary on text. These range from a few lines to many pages, including such info as when and where the poem was first published, commentary on the meaning or referents of the title, explication of unusual words used by Stevens, and so forth. I found a lot of the glosses to be marginally useful, but also many to be quite informative. I'm glad I have the book.
- Finally, I also have The Necessary Angel, a collection of essays that Stevens wrote in the years 1942-1951. Its subtitle is, "Essays on Reality and the Imagination." I've looked at this only very briefly.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Fall Camus
Random review: The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction about the short fiction
Next review: On Tyranny important book
Previous library review: East of Eden
Next library review: All the King's Men
May 14, 2024
Rereading Wallace Stevens
John Serio's new selection of the poetry of Wallace Stevens (1879 -1955) gave me the opportunity to revisit the works of this great American modernist poet. Stevens was able to combine his calling as a poet with a highly successful career as a lawyer and executive for the Hartford Insurance Company. This combination of poetry and practice was a source of my early fascination with Stevens many years ago. Stevens is also unusual because his first major collection of poetry, "Harmonium" appeared in 1923, when he was well into his 40s. The Library of America has published a volume of Stevens' complete poetry and prose. But this volume with poems selected by Serio, a noted Stevens scholar, includes poems from each of the poet's published volumes together with an introductory essay. It is an excellent introduction to Stevens for the new reader and will encourage those familiar with Stevens to read him again. The book is a pleasure to read and hold with large print and each poem beginning on its own page. Here are some of my thoughts on Stevens after reading this volume of Selected Poems.
Stevens writes with wit, gaiety, elegance and beauty. He is among the most philosophical of poets. He is a mixture of the realist and the romantic, and one of his major themes is combining the humdrum nature of daily reality, the quotidian, with romance and imagination through poetry. His thought is complex and shifting, but, on this reading, Stevens seemed to me as akin to an idealist who empahsizes the role of the individual mind in creating its reality. Some of the early poems such as "Sunday Morning" are highly meditative, and the abstract, philosophical character of Stevens poetry became more prevalent as he grew older. The last poems include reflections on the nature of being (I don't know if Stevens was familiar with the philosopher Martin Heidegger) including the final poem in this selection, "On Mere Being", which begins:
"The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song."
Stevens is both deeply introspective writer who describes his own moods and thought and a poet who portrays, paints, and responds to the world he sees around him. Part of Stevens' goal as a poet is to break down the dichotomy between the "objective" and the "subjective" and to combine them in a poem or other work of art. His poems are full of allusions to music and painting. For most of his life, and in his poetry, Stevens was a secularist who saw poetry as a way of bringing meaning to life that religions offered to their adherents.
For all the philosophical character of his work, Stevens resisted intellectualization in favor of a return to the world of feeling and innocence. He is essentially romantic. His poems, in their combination of the abstract, the concrete, the playful, and the allusive also tend to be difficult. In a poem called "Man Carrying Thing", Stevens wrote:
"The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully."
Some of the poems in this selection will likely be beautiful and relatively clear to the new reader. Others may remain opaque through many readings. Stevens is a writer who repays revisiting with time. The shorter poems tend to be easier while the many lengthy poems contain Stevens' extended reflections and discussions with himself on beauty, poetry, feeling, and reality.
Some readers like to pick and choose in an anthology of poetry. My suggestion would be to read the book through, in the chronological order in which Serio presents the poems. There will be much that will be difficult in this approach, but it will give the reader an understanding of Stevens' themes and of his growth. It is also valuable to look at the poems that Serio mentions or discusses in his introduction, particularly, at first, the shorter poems.
The poems that I like and that are relatively easy to read include "The Snow Man", "The Emperor of Ice Cream", and "Sunday Morning" from "Harmonium" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" from "Ideas of Order". "Poetry is a Destructive Force", "The Glass of Water", and "Angels Surrounded by Paysans" are short, accessible poems from later collections. The many beautifully reflective final poems include "To an Old Philosopher in Rome", "A Quiet Normal Life", and "A River of Rivers in Connecticut."
In concluding his introduction to the volume, Serio writes: "My wish is that this slimmer volume of selected poems will also become a prized possession, one that readers will keep close, hidden in them day and night, so that they might cherish, in the central of their being, the vivid transparence that [Stevens'] poetry brings." Serio has indeed given the reader a gift -- a selection of Stevens' poems to be treasured and reread with time.
Robin Friedman
John Serio's new selection of the poetry of Wallace Stevens (1879 -1955) gave me the opportunity to revisit the works of this great American modernist poet. Stevens was able to combine his calling as a poet with a highly successful career as a lawyer and executive for the Hartford Insurance Company. This combination of poetry and practice was a source of my early fascination with Stevens many years ago. Stevens is also unusual because his first major collection of poetry, "Harmonium" appeared in 1923, when he was well into his 40s. The Library of America has published a volume of Stevens' complete poetry and prose. But this volume with poems selected by Serio, a noted Stevens scholar, includes poems from each of the poet's published volumes together with an introductory essay. It is an excellent introduction to Stevens for the new reader and will encourage those familiar with Stevens to read him again. The book is a pleasure to read and hold with large print and each poem beginning on its own page. Here are some of my thoughts on Stevens after reading this volume of Selected Poems.
Stevens writes with wit, gaiety, elegance and beauty. He is among the most philosophical of poets. He is a mixture of the realist and the romantic, and one of his major themes is combining the humdrum nature of daily reality, the quotidian, with romance and imagination through poetry. His thought is complex and shifting, but, on this reading, Stevens seemed to me as akin to an idealist who empahsizes the role of the individual mind in creating its reality. Some of the early poems such as "Sunday Morning" are highly meditative, and the abstract, philosophical character of Stevens poetry became more prevalent as he grew older. The last poems include reflections on the nature of being (I don't know if Stevens was familiar with the philosopher Martin Heidegger) including the final poem in this selection, "On Mere Being", which begins:
"The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song."
Stevens is both deeply introspective writer who describes his own moods and thought and a poet who portrays, paints, and responds to the world he sees around him. Part of Stevens' goal as a poet is to break down the dichotomy between the "objective" and the "subjective" and to combine them in a poem or other work of art. His poems are full of allusions to music and painting. For most of his life, and in his poetry, Stevens was a secularist who saw poetry as a way of bringing meaning to life that religions offered to their adherents.
For all the philosophical character of his work, Stevens resisted intellectualization in favor of a return to the world of feeling and innocence. He is essentially romantic. His poems, in their combination of the abstract, the concrete, the playful, and the allusive also tend to be difficult. In a poem called "Man Carrying Thing", Stevens wrote:
"The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully."
Some of the poems in this selection will likely be beautiful and relatively clear to the new reader. Others may remain opaque through many readings. Stevens is a writer who repays revisiting with time. The shorter poems tend to be easier while the many lengthy poems contain Stevens' extended reflections and discussions with himself on beauty, poetry, feeling, and reality.
Some readers like to pick and choose in an anthology of poetry. My suggestion would be to read the book through, in the chronological order in which Serio presents the poems. There will be much that will be difficult in this approach, but it will give the reader an understanding of Stevens' themes and of his growth. It is also valuable to look at the poems that Serio mentions or discusses in his introduction, particularly, at first, the shorter poems.
The poems that I like and that are relatively easy to read include "The Snow Man", "The Emperor of Ice Cream", and "Sunday Morning" from "Harmonium" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" from "Ideas of Order". "Poetry is a Destructive Force", "The Glass of Water", and "Angels Surrounded by Paysans" are short, accessible poems from later collections. The many beautifully reflective final poems include "To an Old Philosopher in Rome", "A Quiet Normal Life", and "A River of Rivers in Connecticut."
In concluding his introduction to the volume, Serio writes: "My wish is that this slimmer volume of selected poems will also become a prized possession, one that readers will keep close, hidden in them day and night, so that they might cherish, in the central of their being, the vivid transparence that [Stevens'] poetry brings." Serio has indeed given the reader a gift -- a selection of Stevens' poems to be treasured and reread with time.
Robin Friedman
Read
September 30, 2013I tried to read this a month or so back & gave up in a mixture of despair and horror. The dichotomy was complete - on the one side were the poems themselves, writhing in sensuous colours and exploding with weird life; on the other side was my little tiny brain which emitted whirrrs and whee sounds and fell on its side with its wheels gradually coming to a halt. Between my brain and the poems was an unbridgeable chasm made of thin highly polished glass. I could read these poems forwards and backwards, I could be as close to them as I am to the gorgeous fish in the aquarium, but they were in their world and I was in mine and there was no way to make any intelligible connection. Except to say - look, a green one, look, a yellow one. After a while those banal observations turned into self-mockery.
I couldn't understand the first thing about these poems. Nothing.
So I checked out a couple of essays about Mr Stevens' oeuvre. And I didn't understand the essays either. In fact I got the dismaying feeling that the essayists were not 100% sure what Mr Stevens was on about either, but they were already way past their deadlines.
Wallace Stevens seems to be a poet universally acclaimed by everyone over the age of 12 to be one of the 20th Century's very greatest, but no one seems able to give much of a clue as to what he's on about at all. I don't know whether it's me that's wrong and dimwitted or if it's everyone else. Am I the one person looking on and saying in an appalled voice that the Emperor of Ice Cream has not got any cone at all?
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
by Wallace Stevens
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
(Feel free to get back to me about this one.)
I couldn't understand the first thing about these poems. Nothing.
So I checked out a couple of essays about Mr Stevens' oeuvre. And I didn't understand the essays either. In fact I got the dismaying feeling that the essayists were not 100% sure what Mr Stevens was on about either, but they were already way past their deadlines.
Wallace Stevens seems to be a poet universally acclaimed by everyone over the age of 12 to be one of the 20th Century's very greatest, but no one seems able to give much of a clue as to what he's on about at all. I don't know whether it's me that's wrong and dimwitted or if it's everyone else. Am I the one person looking on and saying in an appalled voice that the Emperor of Ice Cream has not got any cone at all?
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
by Wallace Stevens
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
(Feel free to get back to me about this one.)
November 7, 2018
Stevens was a master of his craft: these poems are exquisite, precise, filled with vivid imagery and a beautiful music and sound. His love of language and large vocabulary surface throughout. Reading his work, you feel in the presence of a great intellect, philosopher, and wordsmith. The poems are overflowing with meaning as well, but that meaning is often illusive...the poems are definitely difficult. I enjoyed catching lines, phrases, and verses of beautiful lyricism and profundity. There are more than enough of these moments to get the reader through the uncertainty.
Wallace often writes about the relationship between reality and the imagination and how that relationship is complicated by the senses and language. This is a fascinating concept to probe, especially upon first discovery of these ideas, but I do think he dwells a bit too much on the subject long after he'd said the best of what he could about it.
John N. Serio's introduction to the collection is excellent, as is his short chronology at the end. Overall, it's a wonderful book.
Wallace often writes about the relationship between reality and the imagination and how that relationship is complicated by the senses and language. This is a fascinating concept to probe, especially upon first discovery of these ideas, but I do think he dwells a bit too much on the subject long after he'd said the best of what he could about it.
John N. Serio's introduction to the collection is excellent, as is his short chronology at the end. Overall, it's a wonderful book.
February 4, 2009
Occasional moments of brilliance amidst a hell of a lot of confusion.
Read
December 6, 2018We most treasure the ambiguity of verse because of all literary genres it points out flamboyantly a property we are aware of even in the most formal and mundane communication: we talk, we listen, but we are never sure of what our interlocutor has said and how much we have understood. Yet, despite this communication gap, we continue to talk and listen--why? For the pleasure of communication, of having words pour on our ears and into our minds and hearts. And also for the time and effort we spend remembering the bits and pieces of what was said and the fun of putting it back together into something coherent and comforting. There is also the element of surprise--when the poet writes a line so sharp and twisted that it penetrates our defenses and makes us smile or read twice. Like hitchhikers in fog and rain, we may wait for some sign that we will be saved from our predicament...and then the line comes out of the obscurity, like two headlights piercing the mist, and we see what the poet wants us to see. Wallace Stevens is a poet of such an occasion.
When Stevens asks Ramon Hernandez, in "The Idea of Order at Key West," why the singing ended and why the lights in the boats marked off the dark water of the harbor as if creating a Cartesian grid, we also suddenly feel an urgent need to know. We want to know what things mean, we also want to believe that the cosmos has a pattern, that there is a blueprint behind the indigo blue.
When he implores Ramon for some key to what he senses, Stevens comes as close as any poet can without crashing on the rocks of prose to explaining the life-long objective of his career in verse: to find God, a universal soul, spirit or intelligence behind the apparently random beauty and horror in the cosmos.
Stevens can lose us with his blackbirds and his uncle's monocle and when he tells me that "life is a bitter aspic" I want to tell him to send it back to the kitchen with a footnote. But for every obscurantist poem of Stevens there is a beautifully clear and evocative one, like "Martial Cadenza," "The Dwarf", "The Course of a Particular" and "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm."
Stevens is always trying to solve a problem. It is often a matter that could be mistaken by others as an idiosyncrasy. Even if he resembles a mumbling math genius professor who scrawls inscrutable symbols on a blackboard in dense equations only to erase parts of them while we observe in bemusement, the result of his endeavor is such an elegant placement of words and sounds and such a sincere effort to solve the riddle that we are willing to escort him on his adventure.
When Stevens asks Ramon Hernandez, in "The Idea of Order at Key West," why the singing ended and why the lights in the boats marked off the dark water of the harbor as if creating a Cartesian grid, we also suddenly feel an urgent need to know. We want to know what things mean, we also want to believe that the cosmos has a pattern, that there is a blueprint behind the indigo blue.
When he implores Ramon for some key to what he senses, Stevens comes as close as any poet can without crashing on the rocks of prose to explaining the life-long objective of his career in verse: to find God, a universal soul, spirit or intelligence behind the apparently random beauty and horror in the cosmos.
Stevens can lose us with his blackbirds and his uncle's monocle and when he tells me that "life is a bitter aspic" I want to tell him to send it back to the kitchen with a footnote. But for every obscurantist poem of Stevens there is a beautifully clear and evocative one, like "Martial Cadenza," "The Dwarf", "The Course of a Particular" and "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm."
Stevens is always trying to solve a problem. It is often a matter that could be mistaken by others as an idiosyncrasy. Even if he resembles a mumbling math genius professor who scrawls inscrutable symbols on a blackboard in dense equations only to erase parts of them while we observe in bemusement, the result of his endeavor is such an elegant placement of words and sounds and such a sincere effort to solve the riddle that we are willing to escort him on his adventure.
June 15, 2024
Hugh Kenner says that Wallace Stevens writes 'euphonious nonsense,' likening him to a stage magician, in that he's really doing something quite skillful, but he's also distracting you from the skillful thing that he's doing and that's part of the effect.
I say yes.
I also say we should all read the long poems again and see if there isn't really something important going on there. "The Comedian as the Letter C," for instance-- does it start in a garden and end in a kind of heaven? That is, is it a kind of Bible? Or, for an easier one-- "The Man with the Blue Guitar" has 33 sections; isn't that probably a structural reference to Dante, and then doesn't that explode out into many interpretive movements?
Let's all read more Stevens, is what I'm saying.
He first, as realist, admitted that
Whoever hunts a matinal continent
May, after all, stop short before a plum
And be content and still be realist.
The words of things entangle and confuse.
The plum survives its poems. It may hang
In the sunshine placidly, colored by ground
Obliquities of those who pass beneath,
Harlequined and mazily dewed and mauved
In bloom. Yet it survives in its own form,
Beyond these changes, good, fat, guzzly fruit.
"Good, fat, guzzly" indeed.
I say yes.
I also say we should all read the long poems again and see if there isn't really something important going on there. "The Comedian as the Letter C," for instance-- does it start in a garden and end in a kind of heaven? That is, is it a kind of Bible? Or, for an easier one-- "The Man with the Blue Guitar" has 33 sections; isn't that probably a structural reference to Dante, and then doesn't that explode out into many interpretive movements?
Let's all read more Stevens, is what I'm saying.
He first, as realist, admitted that
Whoever hunts a matinal continent
May, after all, stop short before a plum
And be content and still be realist.
The words of things entangle and confuse.
The plum survives its poems. It may hang
In the sunshine placidly, colored by ground
Obliquities of those who pass beneath,
Harlequined and mazily dewed and mauved
In bloom. Yet it survives in its own form,
Beyond these changes, good, fat, guzzly fruit.
"Good, fat, guzzly" indeed.
Read
February 16, 2021
"Ben, çevremde ne varsa oyum."
(s.26)
Üniversiteden hocam Prof. Dr. Murat Çemrek'in bize derste söylediği bir cümleyi hiç unutmam. İnsanın çevresinin bir miktar yukarısı, bir miktar aşağısı olabileceğine dairdi. Cem Yılmaz'ın bir gösterisinde söylediği "Darth Vader kostümü giyer düğünde ama kayınpederinin elini öper" benzetmesi de bu minvalde. Bu çok önemli bir detay, çünkü insan kişiliğini geliştirmek istiyorsa, kendini yetiştirmek, kendini daha iyi bir yere getirmek istiyorsa öncelikle çevresini de buna göre değiştirmeli demek ki.
Çünkü şairin dediği gibi ,"ben çevremde ne varsa oyum".
"Okurken yanmıyordu lambam,
Bir ses mırıldandı:"Herşeyin
Sonu, soğuğa dönmektir." (s.31)
Üniversiteden hocam Prof. Dr. Murat Çemrek'in bize derste söylediği bir cümleyi hiç unutmam. İnsanın çevresinin bir miktar yukarısı, bir miktar aşağısı olabileceğine dairdi. Cem Yılmaz'ın bir gösterisinde söylediği "Darth Vader kostümü giyer düğünde ama kayınpederinin elini öper" benzetmesi de bu minvalde. Bu çok önemli bir detay, çünkü insan kişiliğini geliştirmek istiyorsa, kendini yetiştirmek, kendini daha iyi bir yere getirmek istiyorsa öncelikle çevresini de buna göre değiştirmeli demek ki.
Çünkü şairin dediği gibi ,"ben çevremde ne varsa oyum".
"Okurken yanmıyordu lambam,
Bir ses mırıldandı:"Herşeyin
Sonu, soğuğa dönmektir." (s.31)
abandoned
October 30, 2010Reading just for pleasure in the language. I have no hope of actually knowing what the poems mean and since the introduction stated sometimes the author didn't know what his poems meant either, I don't feel so bad. :)
May 13, 2015
You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.
From "Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction"
These lines were fireworks in my head when I first came across them. I did a double, triple take, what the hell does that mean? A feeling of something coming from somewhere so very different than the sometimes pure drudgery of day to day practical thought. I can't even remember where I read them, as far as I can recall it was a quote at the opening of book on astronomy. No matter, I've forgotten that particular book but Stevens' lines are seared into my memory. Because of them I started to read poetry again. Something I had put aside in my early 20s for a multitude of reasons.
Stevens is a difficult poet. But you can slowly attune yourself to the particular key of his thought. Start with something like "Sunday Morning", it's pretty clear what it's about though it does fade in and out of coherence from time to time. Stevens was very concerned with how to preserve some notion of the sublime in a world that had become material, at least for him, to a suffocating degree. His answer was through the imagination. Literalness be damned. Harold Bloom considers him a late Romantic, most of the time I can never understand what Harold drones on about but I think there's some merit to this observation. More so because of the effect he has on me than any particular quality in the poetry.
This is probably the best volume to pick up if you are encountering him for the first time. One poem per page and though sizable in selection is not the imposing size of the Collected Poems. It's also of larger dimensions than a regular paper back which for me makes it more enjoyable somehow.
Besides his poetry his essays are well worth reading. Stevens was as philosophical a poet as someone like Mallarme. For him poetry was a way of fighting against the deadening of thought and the cheapening of one's life experiences. I think that's what the triplet I started off with means.
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.
From "Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction"
These lines were fireworks in my head when I first came across them. I did a double, triple take, what the hell does that mean? A feeling of something coming from somewhere so very different than the sometimes pure drudgery of day to day practical thought. I can't even remember where I read them, as far as I can recall it was a quote at the opening of book on astronomy. No matter, I've forgotten that particular book but Stevens' lines are seared into my memory. Because of them I started to read poetry again. Something I had put aside in my early 20s for a multitude of reasons.
Stevens is a difficult poet. But you can slowly attune yourself to the particular key of his thought. Start with something like "Sunday Morning", it's pretty clear what it's about though it does fade in and out of coherence from time to time. Stevens was very concerned with how to preserve some notion of the sublime in a world that had become material, at least for him, to a suffocating degree. His answer was through the imagination. Literalness be damned. Harold Bloom considers him a late Romantic, most of the time I can never understand what Harold drones on about but I think there's some merit to this observation. More so because of the effect he has on me than any particular quality in the poetry.
This is probably the best volume to pick up if you are encountering him for the first time. One poem per page and though sizable in selection is not the imposing size of the Collected Poems. It's also of larger dimensions than a regular paper back which for me makes it more enjoyable somehow.
Besides his poetry his essays are well worth reading. Stevens was as philosophical a poet as someone like Mallarme. For him poetry was a way of fighting against the deadening of thought and the cheapening of one's life experiences. I think that's what the triplet I started off with means.
December 18, 2024
Utvalg og gjendiktning Jan Erik Vold
«for den lyttende, selv ingenting, som
lytter i snøen og ser
ingenting som ikke er der og det ingenting som er.»
utdrag fra Snømannen.
«for den lyttende, selv ingenting, som
lytter i snøen og ser
ingenting som ikke er der og det ingenting som er.»
utdrag fra Snømannen.
June 3, 2015
Started last fall but life got in the way. Starting over now that the semester is over. I'll try to read (aloud) five poems a day.
I'm 70% through, and the poems are increasingly obscure. And they began obscure.
Finished (on a work trip to Cambodia), and I'm very glad I pushed through the tough ones, because some of the best poems came late. Summary judgments: my favorite Wallace Stevens poems bookend his career. I will reread HARMONIUM and the long "blue guitar" poem. If Stevens is actually asserting that reality is a matter of imagination, it's a dangerous and formidable body of work. But I don't think he means it. Dana Gioia says poetry is using words "charged with their utmost meaning"; that's Stevens.
I'm 70% through, and the poems are increasingly obscure. And they began obscure.
Finished (on a work trip to Cambodia), and I'm very glad I pushed through the tough ones, because some of the best poems came late. Summary judgments: my favorite Wallace Stevens poems bookend his career. I will reread HARMONIUM and the long "blue guitar" poem. If Stevens is actually asserting that reality is a matter of imagination, it's a dangerous and formidable body of work. But I don't think he means it. Dana Gioia says poetry is using words "charged with their utmost meaning"; that's Stevens.
April 26, 2012
This really is the first time I've "gotten" Stevens, and I can't stop thinking about these poems. After writing a term paper on his use of sound, I just keep coming back to how generous he is, how lonely, how willing he is to assert a connection between the world and the human mind. Oh, Wally.
Also, super great edition: great introduction, I prefer this to my (shoddily made) Collected any day.
Also, super great edition: great introduction, I prefer this to my (shoddily made) Collected any day.
February 26, 2010
You have to admire anyone who rhymes Byzantines with tambourines.
February 27, 2020
Hugh Kenner says that Stevens is a very serious nonsense writer. And I think that must be true, because Kenner knows what he's talking about and because Stevens is incomprehensible. But it's also true some pretty intensely sensible ideas peak through the nonsense, which makes me think that the nonsense itself is somehow meaningful, like non-representational painting. Non-representational language. Remarkable.
Also, I've decided to eat ice cream whenever I read Stevens, in honor of the Emperor he popularized.
Also, I've decided to eat ice cream whenever I read Stevens, in honor of the Emperor he popularized.
August 6, 2022
This isn’t the Faber edition which I read. The Faber edition contains some of the most remarkable poems in the language.
May 20, 2017
I first read Stevens' Collected Poems a little over 20 years ago. I managed to read the entire Collected Poems; it was my old trade paperback.
He is not the easiest of poets, but you have to read him not for the understanding of each poem, but for the pleasure of the language, the sound, the cadence, the color, the dreaminess, the phrase.
Stevens himself once said -- people read Selected Poems but they don't buy them. People buy Collected Poems, but they don't read them. How true to some extent. So a little over 20 years later, I ventured into the Selected Poems because I wanted to read the editor's (John Serio) introduction as a way of understanding the poet and the poems. Serio's introduction, as well as his selection of poems, was excellent. You have to read that first before diving in.
Once you dive in, take this advice: read all of the shorter poems first. The poems of one or two pages. Then, if you wish, tackle the longer ones. And take Helen Vendler's advice: where possible, take out Stevens' use of he/she and substitute I. If you do that, you will perhaps understand the poems better.
Stevens is a poet to read at intervals. Savor the language. Worry less about what he is saying than how he is saying it. He had a life that seemed rather plain, maybe drab, an imaginary black and white film, grainy. But the poems have life and live in color. Enjoy for what you see and hear rather than for what you might comprehend.
He is not the easiest of poets, but you have to read him not for the understanding of each poem, but for the pleasure of the language, the sound, the cadence, the color, the dreaminess, the phrase.
Stevens himself once said -- people read Selected Poems but they don't buy them. People buy Collected Poems, but they don't read them. How true to some extent. So a little over 20 years later, I ventured into the Selected Poems because I wanted to read the editor's (John Serio) introduction as a way of understanding the poet and the poems. Serio's introduction, as well as his selection of poems, was excellent. You have to read that first before diving in.
Once you dive in, take this advice: read all of the shorter poems first. The poems of one or two pages. Then, if you wish, tackle the longer ones. And take Helen Vendler's advice: where possible, take out Stevens' use of he/she and substitute I. If you do that, you will perhaps understand the poems better.
Stevens is a poet to read at intervals. Savor the language. Worry less about what he is saying than how he is saying it. He had a life that seemed rather plain, maybe drab, an imaginary black and white film, grainy. But the poems have life and live in color. Enjoy for what you see and hear rather than for what you might comprehend.
June 1, 2012
An extensive collection of poems that run the course of this gifted poet's writing career. This is poetry that forces the reader to examine their own philosophy on reality and non-reality. Stevens expresses that perception is reality and that man is the one measure of what is real. Often using words for their sounds (even inventing words for a sound when the word does not yet exist, his prerogative) Stevens creates sensations that will perplex within his poetry that will sometimes only be understood by the reader's subconscious.
This book also includes a brief chronology of the poet's life where the reader will discover interesting tid-bits about Stevens. One interesting detail I found amusing took place in February of 1936 in Key West, Florida. An intoxicated Stevens insulted Ernest Hemingway and a fist-fight took place where Stevens broke his own hand on the very sturdy jaw of Hemingway. For some reason, this made me respect both authors just a little more than I already had!
It took me many hours to read all of the poetry in this book and I will have to have another run at it in the future...again with a dictionary nearby to better understand this Harvard graduate.
This book also includes a brief chronology of the poet's life where the reader will discover interesting tid-bits about Stevens. One interesting detail I found amusing took place in February of 1936 in Key West, Florida. An intoxicated Stevens insulted Ernest Hemingway and a fist-fight took place where Stevens broke his own hand on the very sturdy jaw of Hemingway. For some reason, this made me respect both authors just a little more than I already had!
It took me many hours to read all of the poetry in this book and I will have to have another run at it in the future...again with a dictionary nearby to better understand this Harvard graduate.
October 16, 2013
High praise. Stevens is among the top poets of the twentieth century, among the best of all time.
A chunk of this (a good portion of the latter half of the collection) is too didactic or academic for my taste but that poetry is useful for getting into what Stevens has going on in the rest.
Although I was instantly impressed with his poetry, at first I found much of it rather opaque. The more time spent getting to know Stevens, the greater the reward.
A chunk of this (a good portion of the latter half of the collection) is too didactic or academic for my taste but that poetry is useful for getting into what Stevens has going on in the rest.
Although I was instantly impressed with his poetry, at first I found much of it rather opaque. The more time spent getting to know Stevens, the greater the reward.
June 3, 2017
Don't ask me what the hell any of it means. Hard to explain, but some sort of magic misty glow emanates from every line of this book. Absolutely a desert-island library pick.
December 18, 2017
“The Blue Guitar”!
December 29, 2021
Wallace Stevens is best known for his poems, The Emperor of Ice Cream, and, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. This was the first time I read Selected Poems, and I had no idea if I would enjoy or even finish the book. Stevens does not write poems that can be skimmed or flicked through. Each creation is a meditative exercise that requires consideration and thought. He has a fondness for long poems that (especially in these times of the short, Trumpian, attention span) demand a commitment from the reader; but should you decide to stay and figure it out, you will be amply rewarded.
Stevens is a poet that goes beyond. By that I mean that in image, form and line, his poems aim to remind us that we are inseparable from the universe in which we find ourselves, that we belong to the circumstances of life and death that drive who we are and what we ourselves create. '...wakened birds, / Before they fly, test the reality / Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings...' (Sunday Morning).
His long poem, composed of couplets, 'The Man with the Blue Guitar,' progresses this idea throughout its thirty-three separate poems. No doubt, different readers will read their own meaning into the blue guitar, which is perhaps the point: '... And where, // As I strum the thing, do I pick up / That which momentously declares // Itself not to be I and yet / Must be. It could be nothing else.' (The Man with the Blue Guitar). For me, the blue guitar symbolises the form and the poetry we give to our existence.
However, in the above poem, I also felt that Wallace is speaking to his age, and to the art of his age. He is in conversation with Albert Camus, Hegel, Neitszche,'One says a German chandelier - // A candle is enough to light the world'. There is the spectre of Stalinism, Fascism, the elevation of man and reason over the spiritual, and the slaughter of two world wars, 'Things as they are have been destroyed / Have I? Am I a man that is dead // At a table on which the food is cold?'; of our destruction of and disconnection from the earth, 'The sea returns upon the men, // The fields entrap the children, brick // Is a weed and all the flies are caught, // Wingless and withered but living alive.' Yet the poem strives towards a note of acceptance, 'It must be this rhapsody or none, / The rhapsody of things as they are.'
In Credences of Summer, Stevens displays a remarkable ability to home in on the connection between earth, body and mind, imbuing these physical and psychological changes with mythical, naturalistic, almost religious imagery, 'Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky... // And say this, this is the centre that I seek. / Fix it in an eternal foliage...' Although these are not what I would call religious poems, Stevens' poetry expresses in multiple ways the idea of un-separatedness, of the act of creativity as the echo of an earlier creation, 'The first idea was not our own.' (It Must be Abstract, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction); the explanations we give ourselves regarding our existence are supreme fictions, whether art, poetry, philosophy, religion. We are partial owners of these temporary creations, 'Thus the constant // Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths / Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause / In a universe of inconstancy.' Therein lies hope. (It Must Change, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction). And with this fiction, this myth-making, this art, Stevens implies, comes responsibility, 'The soldier is poor without the poet's lines... How simply the fictive hero becomes the real; / How gladly with proper words the soldier dies,' (It Must Give Pleasure, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction). Take note media outlets!
Stevens is a poet that goes beyond. By that I mean that in image, form and line, his poems aim to remind us that we are inseparable from the universe in which we find ourselves, that we belong to the circumstances of life and death that drive who we are and what we ourselves create. '...wakened birds, / Before they fly, test the reality / Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings...' (Sunday Morning).
His long poem, composed of couplets, 'The Man with the Blue Guitar,' progresses this idea throughout its thirty-three separate poems. No doubt, different readers will read their own meaning into the blue guitar, which is perhaps the point: '... And where, // As I strum the thing, do I pick up / That which momentously declares // Itself not to be I and yet / Must be. It could be nothing else.' (The Man with the Blue Guitar). For me, the blue guitar symbolises the form and the poetry we give to our existence.
However, in the above poem, I also felt that Wallace is speaking to his age, and to the art of his age. He is in conversation with Albert Camus, Hegel, Neitszche,'One says a German chandelier - // A candle is enough to light the world'. There is the spectre of Stalinism, Fascism, the elevation of man and reason over the spiritual, and the slaughter of two world wars, 'Things as they are have been destroyed / Have I? Am I a man that is dead // At a table on which the food is cold?'; of our destruction of and disconnection from the earth, 'The sea returns upon the men, // The fields entrap the children, brick // Is a weed and all the flies are caught, // Wingless and withered but living alive.' Yet the poem strives towards a note of acceptance, 'It must be this rhapsody or none, / The rhapsody of things as they are.'
In Credences of Summer, Stevens displays a remarkable ability to home in on the connection between earth, body and mind, imbuing these physical and psychological changes with mythical, naturalistic, almost religious imagery, 'Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky... // And say this, this is the centre that I seek. / Fix it in an eternal foliage...' Although these are not what I would call religious poems, Stevens' poetry expresses in multiple ways the idea of un-separatedness, of the act of creativity as the echo of an earlier creation, 'The first idea was not our own.' (It Must be Abstract, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction); the explanations we give ourselves regarding our existence are supreme fictions, whether art, poetry, philosophy, religion. We are partial owners of these temporary creations, 'Thus the constant // Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths / Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause / In a universe of inconstancy.' Therein lies hope. (It Must Change, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction). And with this fiction, this myth-making, this art, Stevens implies, comes responsibility, 'The soldier is poor without the poet's lines... How simply the fictive hero becomes the real; / How gladly with proper words the soldier dies,' (It Must Give Pleasure, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction). Take note media outlets!
April 17, 2025
I'm not going to pretend that I have anything original to say about Wallace Stevens. I chose a selected volume because I'd found much of what I've encountered by him in the past to be opaque--even though his playfulness with language and quirky titles half won me over.
As a long time reader of poetry, I'm way, way overdue to read a full volume of his poetry. Some of my first impressions of him from anthologized poems was entrenched by reading more of him. That which makes him beloved in academia (his tackling of abstractions, the theorizing on reality, the imagination, inspiration, constructions of the self) frankly, bore me. A number of his longer works I couldn't stick with past a page. So I've learned my Wallace Stevens limitations. I like his shorter work that includes the playful use of language. Or to put it another way, I like the K.I.S.S. version of Stevens and am happy that he supplies K.I.S.S. poems in his oeurvre for those of us who lack a penchant for the philosophical.
This book was published in 2009 and has 300+ pages of his poetry. It has an introduction by the editor (which I didn't read) and a "Short Chronology" in the back, along with a suggested reading section and an index. It strikes me as a worthwhile place to get to know Stevens so I'm glad to have read it. I can now say that I like some of Stevens' poetry, whereas before I felt that I could barely tolerate him. It's reassuring to know I like at least some of the poetry of a poet who is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century.
As a long time reader of poetry, I'm way, way overdue to read a full volume of his poetry. Some of my first impressions of him from anthologized poems was entrenched by reading more of him. That which makes him beloved in academia (his tackling of abstractions, the theorizing on reality, the imagination, inspiration, constructions of the self) frankly, bore me. A number of his longer works I couldn't stick with past a page. So I've learned my Wallace Stevens limitations. I like his shorter work that includes the playful use of language. Or to put it another way, I like the K.I.S.S. version of Stevens and am happy that he supplies K.I.S.S. poems in his oeurvre for those of us who lack a penchant for the philosophical.
This book was published in 2009 and has 300+ pages of his poetry. It has an introduction by the editor (which I didn't read) and a "Short Chronology" in the back, along with a suggested reading section and an index. It strikes me as a worthwhile place to get to know Stevens so I'm glad to have read it. I can now say that I like some of Stevens' poetry, whereas before I felt that I could barely tolerate him. It's reassuring to know I like at least some of the poetry of a poet who is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century.
September 19, 2022
How does this have an average rating over 4.2?
I don't get it! I don't feel
The rhythm or meter of Wallace Stevens' work.
They don't feel like poems to me.
They are just words written where sentences are
Broken onto new lines where he feels
Like it, with capital letters to start
Each line. Regardless of the
Structure that has gone before.
And some lines will deliberately rhyme,
But not every time
In the same poem.
It was, and was not, and therefore was
Incomprehensible drivel
With lots of meaningless talk of yellows and greens
mostly in three line sections for no obvious reason.
Certainly not because it fit the sentence
Structure or the rhythm of the words.
Maybe it's like the Emporer's New Clothes?
People claim to like it because they are told that
His work is highly acclaimed?
Seriously, I didn't enjoy, or really even understand the point of a single poem in this entire collection. The review above could be a Stevens poem, except for the fact that you can probably understand that I never want to read anything by Wallace Stevens ever again.
Apologies to anyone that genuinely enjoys reading these poems, but I don't even know how that could be possible. They do nothing for me.
I'm still not sure why I didn't give up on this after the 'Harmonium' section. I should have. I think that I was hoping to find something in one of his works that would speak to me.
I don't get it! I don't feel
The rhythm or meter of Wallace Stevens' work.
They don't feel like poems to me.
They are just words written where sentences are
Broken onto new lines where he feels
Like it, with capital letters to start
Each line. Regardless of the
Structure that has gone before.
And some lines will deliberately rhyme,
But not every time
In the same poem.
It was, and was not, and therefore was
Incomprehensible drivel
With lots of meaningless talk of yellows and greens
mostly in three line sections for no obvious reason.
Certainly not because it fit the sentence
Structure or the rhythm of the words.
Maybe it's like the Emporer's New Clothes?
People claim to like it because they are told that
His work is highly acclaimed?
Seriously, I didn't enjoy, or really even understand the point of a single poem in this entire collection. The review above could be a Stevens poem, except for the fact that you can probably understand that I never want to read anything by Wallace Stevens ever again.
Apologies to anyone that genuinely enjoys reading these poems, but I don't even know how that could be possible. They do nothing for me.
I'm still not sure why I didn't give up on this after the 'Harmonium' section. I should have. I think that I was hoping to find something in one of his works that would speak to me.
Read
November 30, 2022The playful whimsy of Stevens' verse is timeless. Rarely has anyone had the vision to see straight through to the marrow of reality and then go to write about it with such undisturbed wonder. Marital faithfulness might have something to do with it...Stevens' life seems at first glance at least much stabler than most...
In any case, let's have away with the doom-prophetic modernists like Arnold and Eliot and Pound. One imagines that men like these were never in the least bit happy. Stevens wrote out of wonder, not nausea or lament. Even his sad poems are like this, always a healthy distance from outright despair. Might this not be the greatest sign of a powerful imagination?
In any case, let's have away with the doom-prophetic modernists like Arnold and Eliot and Pound. One imagines that men like these were never in the least bit happy. Stevens wrote out of wonder, not nausea or lament. Even his sad poems are like this, always a healthy distance from outright despair. Might this not be the greatest sign of a powerful imagination?
December 24, 2019
When you read the poems in this remarkable collection, do it alongside the the Poetry Foundation's Wallace Stevens material, which has several interesting podcasts about Stevens and specific poems, notably "Pleasure and Death," which went a long way to helping unpack a poem I've loved for a long time but never understood, "The Emperor of Ice Cream." None of Wallace's poems is "accessible" but each and every one I spent/continue to spend time and mental energy investigating was well worth it.
March 3, 2020
Wow, being an insurance company executive I would have thought he'd be a little like Professor Richard Wilbur.....but I don't know WTF I just read. 3 poems stood out:
Sunday Morning
A High Toned Christian Woman
The House was Quiet and the World was Calm
One poem I was not fond of did have an incredible 2 lines:
But let the poet on his balcony
And the sleepers in their sleep shall move
That's some mighty fine versifyin'.
Sunday Morning
A High Toned Christian Woman
The House was Quiet and the World was Calm
One poem I was not fond of did have an incredible 2 lines:
But let the poet on his balcony
And the sleepers in their sleep shall move
That's some mighty fine versifyin'.
March 20, 2024
Bordering the point of ineluctable unintelligibility, tangent to self-contained totality. Soul to Soul, Subject to Subject, toward the things-in-themsleves, still we need to know. After all, will we be? Yes, Being is promised. For we belong to a human world, this is a human truth. But then what is human? To love, to lose, to yearn, to yield, to hand, in hand!
April 9, 2023
i’ve found a new favourite poet !! i’ve made so many annotations in this already but i feel like it’s a collection i could read over and over again and always find something new. absolutely exquisite <3
August 12, 2018
Difficult ... perhaps too philosophical ... definitely merits a re-read ...
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