Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Wallace StevensWallace Stevens









Wallace Stevens:The Hartford Insuance

Company

Wallace Stevens:The Hartford Insuance

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Wallace Stevens--House on Westerly TerraceWallace Stevens--House on Westerly Terrace


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 and light, no further demonstration would be necessary. Like light, it adds nothing, except itself.Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel

Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man”Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man”

One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to thinkOf any misery in the sound of the wind,In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the landFull of the same windThat is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,And, nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice Cream”Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice Cream”

Call the roller of big cigars,The muscular one, and bid him whipIn kitchen cups concupiscent curds.Let the wenches dawdle in such dressAs they are used to wear, and let the boysBring flowers in last month's newspapers.Let be be finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheetOn which she embroidered fantails onceAnd spread it so as to cover her face.If her horny feet protrude, they comeTo show how cold she is, and dumb.Let the lamp affix its beam.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

IAmong twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the blackbird.

III was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.

IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime.

IVA man and a womanAre one.A man and a woman and a blackbirdAre one.



VI do not know which to prefer,The beauty of inflectionsOr the beauty of innuendoes,The blackbird whistlingOr just after.

VIIcicles filled the long windowWith barbaric glass.The shadow of the blackbirdCrossed it, to and fro.The moodTraced in the shadowAn indecipherable cause.



VIIO thin men of Haddam,Why do you imagine golden birds?Do you not see how the blackbirdWalks around the feetOf the women about you?

VIIII know noble accentsAnd lucid, inescapable rhythms;But I know, too,That the blackbird is involvedIn what I know.

IXWhen the blackbird flew out of sight,It marked the edgeOf one of many circles.



XAt the sight of blackbirdsFlying in a green light,Even the bawds of euphonyWould cry out sharply.

XIHe rode over ConnecticutIn a glass coach.Once, a fear pierced him,In that he mistookThe shadow of his equipageFor blackbirds.

Wallace StevensWallace StevensThirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

XIIThe river is moving.The blackbird must be flying.

XIIIIt was evening all afternoon.It was snowingAnd it was going to snow.The blackbird satIn the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens, “A Quiet Normal Life”Wallace Stevens, “A Quiet Normal Life”

His place, as he sat and as he thought, was notIn anything that he constructed, so frail,So barely lit, so shadowed over and naught ,

As, for example, a world in which, like snow,He became an inhabitant, obedientTo gallant notions on the part of cold. It was here. This was the setting and the timeOf year. Here in his house and in his room,In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked

And the oldest and the warmest heart was cutBy gallant notions on the part of night—Both late and alone, above the crickets’ chords, Babbling, each one, the uniqueness of its sound.There was no fury in transcendent forms.But his actual candle blazed with artifice.

Wallace Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”Wallace Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”

Light the first light of eveningIn which we rest and, for small reason, thinkThe world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawlWrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.We say God and the imagination are one...How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,We make a dwelling in the evening air,In which being there together is enough.

Wallace Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”Wallace Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.They were of a remembered timeOr of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sunWere waste and welterAnd the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were oneAnd his poems, although makings of his self,Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.What mattered was that they should bearSome lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,In the poverty of their words,Of the planet of which they were part.

Wallace Stevens, “The Planet on the Table”Wallace Stevens, “The Planet on the Table”

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Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)