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)
Tag: Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
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
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
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
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)
Wallace Stevens
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)
Wallace Stevens
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
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)
Wallace Stevens
It comes about that the drifting of these curtainsIs full of long motions, as the ponderousDeflations of distance; or as cloudsInseparable from their afternoons;Or the changing of light, the droppingOf the silence, wide sleep and solitudeOf night, in which all motionIs beyond us, as the firmament,Up-rising and down-falling, baresThe last largeness, bold to see. —… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Between farewell and the absence of farewell,The final mercy and the final loss,The wind and the sudden falling of the wind. — Wallace Stevens, from “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. (Alfred A. Knopf; 1st edition June 27, 1954)
The Vale of Soul-Making 