[Gregory Palmerino]

Originally Posted by Clive Watkins

Wallace Stevens : The Woman in Sunshine

It is only that this warmth and movement are like
The warmth and movement of a woman.

It is not that there is any image in the air
Nor the beginning nor end of a form:

It is empty. But a woman in threadless gold
Burns us with brushings of her dress

And a dissociated abundance of being,
More definite for what she is—

Because she is disembodied,
Bearing the odors of the summer fields,

Confessing the taciturn and yet indifferent,
Invisibly clear, the only love.

(1948: from The Auroras of Autumn)

Clive,

It's a beautiful poem. This thread is reminding me of two thoughts: 1) I need to pick up some Stevens and get reading, and 2) the problem with death is that it cuts off all that reading.

Also, this poem reminds me of Frost's "The Silken Tent."

Certainly, the most important line in this poem is "Because she is disembodied." I'm sure there are a lot of folks out there who might see this line as sexist or even misogynistic in its delivery. And there are those that might see it as nihilistic (I think Mr. Ferris made this point). I like to think there is more animism in Stevens to balance any oblivion out there. But I fear I am projecting my own psychology on him in saying that. Nonetheless, there's an expansiveness in his poems that does not feel like an abyss but an infinite and eternal falling into something greater.

To the bookshelf! Charge!

Cheers,
Greg

PS One of my favorite Stevens' poems is "Peter Quince at the Clavier."
Just a taste:

Beauty is momentary in the mind—
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

[Gregory Dowling]

I, too, am a fan of "The Comedian as Letter C", to the extent that I even wrote a long-ish essay on it. I'll just quote one brief passage from that essay, since it fits in well with what William has said above about Browning and Stevens (I like the idea of Stevens meeting Browning's ghost):

In the next section the contrast between the puny figure of Crispin - "A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass" - and the mighty powers of the storm is made even more manifest. The poet uses the language of bombastic excess to brilliant effect, sending up Crispin, who is baffled by the vast, uncontrolled music of the ocean, with its "Ubiquitous concussion, slap and sigh, / Polyphony beyond his baton's thrust". Bloom has pointed to echoes of Whitman's "husky-voiced" sea, which "Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death…" But the language of Stevens's sea is far more polysyllabic and, while overwhelming, is perhaps in the end less portentous. If anything, Stevens may perhaps be parodying some of the more inflated moments in Whitman, while he is also using to superb effect Whitman's love of combining erudite terms with the plainest of homely diction:

imperative haw / Of hum

and:

What word split up in clickering syllables
And storming under multitudinous tones
Was name for this short-shanks in all that brunt?

Another possible influence in this sea-section is this remarkable passage from Browning's Aristophanes' Apology:

What if thy watery plural vastitude,
Rolling unanimous advance, had rushed,
Might upon might, a moment, - stood, one stare,
Sea-face to city-face, thy glaucous wave
Glassing that marbled last magnificence, -
Till fate's pale tremulous foam-flower tipped the grey,
And when wave broke and overswarmed and, sucked
To bounds back, multitudinously ceased,
Let land again breathe unconfused with sea,
Attiké was, Athenai was not now!

In this late poem Browning is both mourning the loss of Athens and celebrating the power of language to preserve it. Just so Balaustion, the heroine of the poem, manages to preserve the dramas of Athens in her memory: and, significantly, the poem pays equal tribute to the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes.

Similarly Crispin shows a kind of comic resilience, which is both mocked and celebrated. As Rajeev S. Patke points out, Crispin's name recalls both the comic barber and valet of 17th-century French drama and the Christian martyr invoked as protector by Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt. He is both comic butt and emblematic hero, both petty-bourgeois buffoon and artistic adventurer. Throughout the poem we see him undergoing continual trials, resulting in "several ritual deaths" from which, as Ronald Wallace says, he is resurrected each time. At the end of his maritime experience, we are told that "Crispin beheld and Crispin was made new"

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Michael Ferris

Bill,

I enthusiastically agree with you on this poem. I'm with WS all the way, through tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk, right to the widow's wince.

I have not read much Browning, but on your recommendation, I shall add him to my Urgently Required Attention list, stat. I'd be pleased for you to send me a link by PM to your poem.

M

Linky is on its way. I am still debating whether or not to post the poem. Bill Carpenter, a friend of mine and someone I trust very highly, suggested that my poem on Stevens and Browning was entertaining but probably not much beyond that.

I'm with W.S. all the way, too. And by all means, please check out some Browning. But avoid the highly anthologized stuff, or at least the songs and tidbits you've seen all over. I suggest Fra Lippo Lippi first, then things like Andrea Del Sarto, and his many longish monologues. The Ring and the Book is an immense tome, and I've barely scratched the surface with that.

But as for Browning's technical powers: he was virtually unrivaled among his contemporaries, except for Tennyson. I'm sure you've read My Last Duchess. There's an excellent line-by-line breakdown of that poem on Youtube, which helps in grasping what the poem achieves.

[Michael F]

First, let me say how glad I am that this thread is becoming what I hoped it would – a very interesting discussion of Stevens. Clive, and Gregory, and Gregory, thank you for participating. I have already profited greatly from this discussion.

Clive – lovely poem, indeed. Love poem? You did not say this, but I suspect this is why you posted it; I hope I’m not making an ass of myself by assumption. Anyway, I view it more about the summer day than the woman: “the woman in sunshine” can mean the female or feminine attributes inhering in sunshine, or better said, the way WS is poetically experiencing the sunshine. He likens the balmy sunshine and breeze to a woman in typically Stevens-ish ‘bawdy’ or sensual language. The woman is nameless, and not even addressed directly. And her love is indifferent? That's something of a strange thing to say. The sunshine is indifferent, we probably agree. I read it more as a poem of Stevens’s aesthetic delight in, and desire for the world, and in this case, specifically, the sun on a balmy day. Compare this to the love poems of Auden, which are so personal. Or Yeats, with his love of "the pilgrim soul in you". IMO, we remain in the realm of the senses and the aesthetic. I may be misreading, I readily admit. It is a pastime of mine. But I do sense a big difference.

Gregory P – yes, I linked to “Peter Quince” in one of my previous posts. I like it, too. If I call you Greg, will you call me Mike, or Michael? 'Mr Ferris'? Lord ha' mercy!

Gregory D – IIRC, Jarrell also comments on Stevens’s parodying of other poets, including Whitman. I can’t recall if it is with reference to “The Comedian”, but it may well be. But we agree in general on the nature of the language; I rather less charitably called it ‘garish’. I have less patience with it, for two reasons: to me, it is like honey, and as Shakespeare said, a little more than a little is much too much. But more importantly, parodying or borrowing from previous poets, and using rare and foreign words and the like makes this poem still more a poem that is really only for other poets or critics of poetry; ‘inside’ jokes, and the bow-tied philosopher’s development of his aesthetic theory, constrict the universe of people who can appreciate it to a small one, indeed. Adrian Mitchell once said “most people ignore poetry because poetry ignores most people.” I feel that way about this poem. But as I remarked to Bill, it’s a difference of taste, a difference in desire for what I want poetry to do. I do recall – and I should have said this before to Bill – marking the first 9 lines he quoted in his post as among the most beautiful in the poem. I respect Bill’s opinion, and yours.

I appreciate the exchange of views. I am wrestling with Wallace as honestly as I know how.

Keep romping…

[Gregory Dowling]

Michael,

I agree that "The Comedian" is never going to have a broad appeal. But once you accept that, there's a lot to enjoy. I certainly find it more immediately enjoyable than, say, most of Pound's Cantos; in Pound's case, if you don't get the allusions you often get nothing. I sometimes don't understand Stevens at all but still enjoy the sound of it... Or just the weirdness of it.

Anyway, thanks for starting this thread, which has been very stimulating.

[Roger Slater]

My favorite long poem of Stevens is Esthetique du Mal, especially the final section.

[Michael F]

Gregory, good points, all. No more shade from me for "The Comedian", I promise!

Roger, that's one I haven't read. May I ask why you like it?

[Roger Slater]

Here's why I like it:

The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair. Perhaps,
After death, the non-physical people, in paradise,
Itself non-physical, may, by chance, observe
The green corn gleaming and experience
The minor of what we feel. The adventurer
In humanity has not conceived of a race
Completely physical in a physical world.
The green corn gleams and the metaphysicals
Lie sprawling in majors of the August heat,
The rotund emotions, paradise unknown.

This is the thesis scrivened in delight,
The reverberating psalm, the right chorale.

One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of 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 out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur
Merely in living as and where we live.

[Allen Tice]

You are a practicing physicist, Roger, and you made a fitting selection. Kant said that sense impressions are the only way humans can know anything about the universe. Stevens must have agreed, and accordingly glories in sense data, reasonably giving it first place over speculations about the wan possible "existence" of imagined (by him) non-physical beings of some sort. Which is fine. How can he or anyone do otherwise? What else is possible to the "material girl" (or guy)? Which is my point. You (and I) may revel in the richness of experience, but the limits of our physical structure constantly limit our speculations about the matrix of our experience. It's a small point, and not one to turn many somersaults over. I applaud your choice of a Stevens quote.

[Ian Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

Here's why I like it:

The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair. Perhaps,
After death, the non-physical people, in paradise,
Itself non-physical, may, by chance, observe
The green corn gleaming and experience
The minor of what we feel. The adventurer
In humanity has not conceived of a race
Completely physical in a physical world.
The green corn gleams and the metaphysicals
Lie sprawling in majors of the August heat,
The rotund emotions, paradise unknown.

This is the thesis scrivened in delight,
The reverberating psalm, the right chorale.

One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of 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 out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur
Merely in living as and where we live.

This reminds me more than any of the Steven's quoted here of much of Ashbery's work, which is difficult, obscure, but does deal with grand themes and must, I feel, have some sort of "point." Of course the Stevens is easier, but it remains difficult. This makes me want to read a bunch of Stevens now...