Re-Statement of Romance The night knows nothing of the chants of night. It is what it is as I am what I am: And in perceiving this I best perceive myself And you. Only we two may interchange Each in the other what each has to give. Only we two are one, not you and… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
The figures of the past go cloaked. They walk in mist and rain and snow And go, go slowly, but they go. — Wallace Stevens, from “Poesie Abrutie,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage 1990)
The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
Now in midsummer come and all fools slaughtered And spring’s infuriations over and a long way To the first autumnal inhalations, young broods Are in the grass, the roses are heavy with a weight Of fragrance and the mind lays by its trouble. — Wallace Stevens, from “Credences of Summer,” The Collected Poems of Wallace… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
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… — Wallace Stevens,… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
Blanche McCarthy Look in the terrible mirror of the sky And not in this dead glass, which can reflect Only the surfaces––the bending arm, The leaning shoulder and the searching eye. Look in the terrible mirror of the sky. Oh, bend against the invisible; and lean To symbols of descending night; and search The glare… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. — Wallace Stevens, from “The Plain Sense of Things,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Alfred A. Knopf, 1954)
One might have thought of sight, but who could thinkOf what it sees, for all the ill it sees?Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,But the dark italics it could not propound.And out of what one sees and hears and outof what one feels, who could have thought to makeSo many selves, so… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
He was a shell of dark blue glass, or ice, Or air collected in a deep essay, Or light embodied, or almost, a flash On more than muscular shoulders, arms and chest, Blue’s last transparence as it turned to black. — Wallace Stevens, from “Chicorua to Its Neighbor,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage,… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
