Dwelling always in an in-between realm, between eras of the imagination, there exists a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagined are one. — Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America, October 1, 1997)
The best definition of true imagination is that it is the sum of our faculties. Poetry is the scholar’s art. The acute intelligence of the imagination, the illimitable resources of its memory, its power to possess the moment it perceives — if we were speaking of light itself, and thinking of the relationship between objects… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
Infant, it is enough in lifeTo speak of what you see. But waitUntil sight wakens the sleepy eyeAnd pierces the physical fix of things. — Wallace Stevens, from “The Red Fern,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage, 1990)
The Paltry Nude Starts On A Spring Voyage But not on a shell, she starts,Archaic, for the sea.But on the first-found weedShe scuds the glitters,Noiselessly, like one more wave. She too is discontentAnd would have purple stuff upon her arms,Tired of the salty harbors,Eager for the brine and bellowingOf the high interiors of the sea.… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
And for what, except for you, do I feel love?Do I press the extremest book of the wisest manClose to me, hidden in me day and night?In the uncertain light of single, certain truth,Equal in living changingness to the lightIn which I meet you, in which we sit at rest,For a moment in the central… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
Crude Foyer Thought is false happiness; the ideaThat merely by thinking one can,Or may, penetrate, not may,But can, that one is sure to be able– That there lies at the end of thoughtA foyer of the spirit in a landscapeOf the mind, in which we sitAnd wear humanity’s bleak crown; In which we read the… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
For the listener, who listens in the snow,And, nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that is — Wallace Stevens, from “The Snowman,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage, 1982)
What syllable are you seeking,Vocalissimus,In the distances of sleep?Speak it. — Wallace Stevens, “To the Roaring Wind,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage Books, 1990)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird I Among twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a womanAre one.A… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
The organic consolation, the completeSociety of the spirit when it isAlone, the half-arc hanging in mid-air Composed, appropriate to the incomplete,Supported by a half-arc in mid-earth.Millions of instances of which I am one. —Wallace Stevens, from “Repetitions of a Young Captain,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Vintage Books, 1990)
The Vale of Soul-Making 