[Allen Tice]

Woops! I think I just mixed up Roger Slater with Martin Rocek. Say it isn't so! Which one is the physicist? It's a small point, I know, but things should be kept Euclidean most of the time.

[Roger Slater]

I'm no physicist, though I am made up of a wide array of subatomic particles.

[Allen Tice]

I thank you for your reply, and am, for the moment, mentally heaping dust on my head. Too much Kant can't be good. However, if my faux pas prompted you to get in touch with Martin, that's all to the good. Three heads are better than one in this case, perhaps. My liking of your quote is unstinted.

[Michael F]

Thanks, Rogerbob.

That does seems very Stevens, even Ur-Stevens. I’m curious how you read the last three lines of S1. I have my conjecture, in line with my general view...

The green corn gleams and the metaphysicals
Lie sprawling in majors of the August heat,
The rotund emotions, paradise unknown.


[edited in: I'm off to see family for a few days. I hope the romp goes on. I see Clive's post below, and am optimistic!]

[Clive Watkins]

Wallace Stevens: Angel Surrounded by Paysans


One of the countrymen:

................................................There is
a welcome at the door to which no one comes?

The angel:

I am the angel of reality
Seen for a moment standing in the door.

I have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore
And live without a tepid aureole,

Or stars that follow me, not to attend,
But, of my being and its knowing, part.

I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.

Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,

Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone

Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings
Like watery words awash; like meanings said

By repetitions of half-meanings. Am I not,
Myself, only half of a figure of a sort,

A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man
Of the mind, an apparition apparelled in

Apparels of such lightest look that a turn
Of my shoulder and quickly, too quickly, I am gone?


(Final poem in The Auroras of Autumn, 1949: based on a still life by Tal Coat owned by Stevens and on which he bestowed this title)

[Aaron Novick]

Well, this thread has gotten me to pick up my collected Stevens and start working through it, start to finish. Already rewarding me, two poems in. I don't know if there is a deeper meaning to "Earthy Anecdote" beyond the imagery, but the imagery is just marvelous.

And I think "Invective Against Swans" is a clever and amusing satire of bad poetry, about as good as the genre gets, because it is interesting in its own right. I was initially surprised by his decision to place it second in Harmonium, but on reflection I think it works: knowing what I know about the later Stevens, I think this poem's crows are a nice harbinger of the cold which Stevens sang so well. (I expand upon these thoughts here.)

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

Well, this thread has gotten me to pick up my collected Stevens and start working through it, start to finish. Already rewarding me, two poems in.

It will continue to reward. Just be wary of anyone telling you that Stevens wrote nonsense. His poems might appear to be nonsensical, but after a bit of unpacking, research, and deep focus, the profundity of it will hit you, like a pillow loaded with dynamite.

[William A. Baurle]

Aaron,

I liked your article on Invective Against Swans. I confess I didn't understand the poem, but it seems like you've nailed it. I've probably read it a number of times, but my memory of late, both long and short term, is so bad that I'm almost at the point that every time I revisit a book of poetry, it's like a new discovery. If things get any worse, I'll be able to hide my own eggs for Easter (that's a tasteless joke I heard in my travels as a 30 year worker in caring for the elderly).

I've just begun reading something you wrote about Geoffrey Hill. I can't wait to find out what you think of The Orchards of Syon. That's the only book I have of his. I find some of it fairly easy to unpack, but a lot of it really baffling.

You say you've read 74 books in a year. Holy crap! I'm a terribly slow reader. It took me several weeks to get through Moby Dick, and even longer to get through Middlemarch. It took me years to get through Ulysses, because I had to keep starting over. I simply can't read quickly. I won't know what the hell I'm reading if I try and read too fast. I envy people like you. I have enough books in my Kindle library to last me ten lifetimes, but seeing as I've only got the one, I will die desperately unsatisfied. Ah, well.

Anyway, I've bookmarked your blog.

[Aaron Novick]

Thanks, William. I'm glad you liked it.

Geoffrey Hill is on my list of things I'd like to get to this year, though I plan to focus on Stevens and Frost for now.

Most of those 74 books were for my academic studies (I'm in grad school for philosophy of science). I basically spend most of my day reading and writing for that, and then I come home and blow off steam by reading and writing other things.

[Michael F]

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say… I don’t mean to be argumentative, but as I remarked in another thread, this is one of “the truffles” that I can’t help sniffing out when I’m in the woods… it is a subject that fascinates me.

Re: Esthetique du Mal.

I read that section, and S1 in particular, as WS’s assertion that he experiences the world far more intensely than the non-physicals, i.e., believers, theists. I read it as taking the argument in “A High Toned Old Christian Woman” to a new level: it is he, and not they, who experience the paradise of “the rotund emotions”, emotions that would swamp the non-physicals.

I’m troubled by the need to compare. How do you judge what another feels? How do you gauge, compared to your own, the rapture and ecstasy of Hopkins at dappled things, Whitman in the mystical moist night air, or Teresa in contemplation? Or how do you measure comparatively the despair of Dostoyevsky, the anguish of Melville, or the passion of Auden? Might not this be a false dichotomy – especially when you argue, as does WS, that your own ideation and imagination largely determine the world?

For example: what I feel at the opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto, or Bach’s “Great” fugue in G minor, and – yes! – the lips of the Sun on my skin, or the trill of the wood thrush at dawn. How could I know to rank ordinally the intensity of my feelings compared to those of anyone else? Why should I care to?

I think of this from Miss Emily, who believed and disbelieved “a thousand times a day”, for it kept faith “nimble”:


I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!


Or do I misread?