The Dao of Wallace Stevens

the wind shifts, by wallace stevens

this is how the wind shifts:
like the thoughts of an old human
who still think eagerly
and despairingly.
the wind shifts like this:
like a human without illusions,
who still feels irrational things within her.
the wind shifts like this:
like humans approaching proudly,
like humans approaching angrily.
this is how the wind shifts:
like a human, heavy and heavy,
who does not care.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 68)

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There used to be an old expression, 'there's been a shift in the wind,' to indicate a change in the feeling, tone or mood of a group or of a significant person, like a boss, or a difficult relative.  I hardly ever hear it anymore, but maybe it was more prevalent during a simpler time, when people lived closer to the agricultural world.  My father was a seaman, so the concept of a 'shift in the wind' was important and meaningful at our house.

Anyway, the 'psychological wind' meant here does shift in an irrational way, even for those who believe they have no illusions, and perhaps don't.  Interesting that Stevens sees the human who 'doesn't care' as 'heavy.'  Not easily shifted by the wind, I should think, but apparently Stevens disagrees.  However, our own mood can easily shift when we are around someone who is depressed, who 'doesn't care.'  Perhaps this is what he alludes to.

architecture i-v, by wallace stevens

i
what manner of building shall we build?
let us design a chastel de chastete.
de pensee....
never cease to deploy the structure.
keep the laborers shouldering plinths.
pass the whole of life earing the clink of the
chisels of the stone-cutters cutting the stones.

ii
in this house, what manner of utterance shall there be?
what heavenly dithyramb
and cantilene?
what niggling forms of gargoyle patter?
of what shall the speech be,
in that splay of marble
and of obedient pillars?

iii
and how shall those come vested that come there?
in their ugly reminders?
or gaudy as tulips?
as they climb the stairs
to the group of Flor Coddling Hecuba?
as they climb the flights
to the closes
overlooking whole seasons?

iv
let us build the building of light.
push up the towers
to the cock-tops.
these are the pointings of our edifice,
whish, like a gorgeous palm,
shall tuft the commonplace.
these are the window-sill
on which the quiet moonlight lies.

v
how shall we hew the sun,
split and make blocks,
to build a ruddy palace?
how carve the violet moon
to set in nicks?
let us fix portals, east and west,
abhorring green-blue north and blue-green south.
our chiefest dome a demoiselle of gold.
pierce the interior with pouring shafts,
in diverse chambers.
pierce, too, with buttresses of coral air
and purple timbers,
various argentines,
embossings of the sky.

(please continue reading this poem's final two stanzas in some handy volume)

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 66-67)

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This poem seems to set out Wallace Stevens' vision for his poetry: a lifelong activity with the goal of creating an edifice, an opus of work, just as the medieval artisans spent lifetime(s) creating the cathedrals of europe.  We see many motifs that we will revisit in his work: the palm, the colors (violet, coral, purple, ruddy, etc), the crystals (stones), the spires and various motifs of ascension.

the bird with the coppery keen claws, by wallace stevens

above the forest of the parakeets,
a parakeet of parakeets prevails,
a pip of life amid a mort of tails.

(the rudiments of tropics are around,
aloe of ivory, pear of rust rind.)
his lids are white because his eyes are blind.

he is not paradise of parakeets,
of his gold ether, golden alguazil.
except because he broods there and is still,

panache upon panache, his tails deploy
upward and outward, in green-vented forms,
his tip a drop of water full of storms.

but though the turbulent tinges undulate
as his pure intellect applies its laws,
he moves not on his coppery, keen claws.

he munches a dry shell while he exerts
his will, yet never ceases, perfect cock,
to flare, in the sun-pallor of his rock.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 65)

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This is pure Stevens' sound-poetry at its best.  I'm sure there are all sorts of meaning that can be read into it, and lots of deity-punning, but I'm just enjoying the sound-images and the rhythms of pomp and circumstance.  Anca Rosu's book would probably be good to consult on this poem, and if I have time this evening I certainly will.

tattoo

the light is like  a spider.
it crawls over the water.
it crawls over the edges of the snow.
it crawls under your eyelids
and spreads its webs there -
its two webs.

the webs of your eyes
are fastened
to the flesh and bones of you
as to rafters or grass.

there are filaments of your eyes
on the surface of the water
and in the edges of the snow.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 64)

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I decided to include this poem because I like what I see as Stevens' awareness of our complete interconnectivity with the world of nature: the union of the senses with the objects of sense.  The way our senses evolved, somehow, in a relationship with their stimulants.

frogs eat butterflies, snakes eat frogs, hogs eat snakes, men eat hogs, by wallace stevens

it is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
tugging at banks, until they seemed
bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,

that the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,
the breath of turgid summer, and
heavy with thunder's rattapallax,

that the man who erected this cabin, planted
this field, and tended it awhile,
knew not the quirks of imagery,

that the hours of his indolent, arid days,
grotesque with this nosing in banks,
this somnolence and rattapallax,

seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being,
as the swine-like rivers suckled themselves
while they went seaward to the sea-mouths.

(from Stevens: Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 62)

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Wow! 

I think this poem may have lost some of its pithyness due to the fact that we are so far less an agricultural society than we once were.  Stevens is so right about rivers being like hogs nosing into the soil.  It's a brilliant animalization of nature.  Also, it is so Pennsylvania...'the breath of turgid summer, and / heavy with thunder's rattapallax.'  He is here writing about a season that is very far removed from our present season, but anyone who has sweltered through a southeastern Pennsylvania summer knows whereof I speak. 

Also, it's a guy poem: writing about rivers as 'swine,' noticing the chain of comestibles, and using it ironically as poetry.  (I'm sure there is some kind of technical word for this kind of humor.)  Anyway: the 'virile poet' puts in an appearance here.  Interesting how some of the great modern poets worried about their masculine image: Stevens and Neruda mention it rather a lot, at any rate.  But I don't wish to stray into gender issues.

It's a very fun poem, even today, and it must have been 'shocking' in its day: mentioning the chain of predation in a poem!  Comparing rivers to swine, shocking, simply shocking!says church-lady.  Is 'rattapallax' really a word?  I'll have to check it out.  Summer thunder in PA is something to invent wonderful words for: 'rattapallax' will do.

anecdote of the jar, by wallace stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
and round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
and sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
and tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 60-61)

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For some really fine commentaries on this poem, check out these links:  scroll around this site out of New Zealand to find good short commentaries on this poem.  And also, check out this article offered by the Modern American Poetry site.

more on 'six significant landscapes' by wallace stevens

This is typical of the kind of Song dynasty picture recreated poetically in the poem, and may even be one of the pictures Stevens saw.  It is from a book of chinese art in my own collection.

A few excerpts from an article in the Wallace Stevens Journal, 21:2, Fall 1997, pp.123-142, Chinese Landscape Painting in Stevens' 'Six Significant Landscapes' by Zhaoming Qian.  I think this article is quite interesting, and helps me to understand the other three poems he mentions in the opening paragraph.  Stevens was drawing a Song dynasty picture in words.  I only wish I could include the entire article by Qian here.

Qian writes that this poem is an example of "ekphrasis, defined as 'the verbal representation of visual representation,' (a) genre whose central goal is the 'overcoming of otherness, ' that is, 'those rival modes of representation called the visual, graphic, plastic or 'spatial' arts.'  [In this poem, and in three others - Anecdote of the Jar, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Le Monocle de Mon Oncle]  what Stevens seeks to explore includes not only passage to the other genre (the visual) but also passage to the other age (the past) and the other culture (the Orient).  His endeaveor to cross genre, age, and culture at the same time is best exemplified by section I of 'Six Significant Landscapes,' a verbalized depiction of Song Chinese landscape painting."

"The poem, like the Chinese painting it represents, portrays a single impression: consciousness of the unity of all created things, mak(ing) a complex statement on the paradox of permanence within change."

Stevens "copied out (a little landscape poem, by the Song poet Wang Anshi) for his fiancee Elsie on 18 March 1909  -- 'It is midnight; all is silent in the house; the water-clock has stopped.  But I am unable to sleep because of the beauty of the trembling shapes of the spring-flowers, thrown by the moon upon the blind.'  He remarked, ' Curious thing, how little we know about Asia, and all that.  It makes me wild to learn it all in a night.'"

"Litz aptly notes, the first five sections are all meant to mock 'those habits of mind and language which screen us away from new perceptions of things as they are.'  Binyon, in Painting in the Far East,  observes that '(the Song artist) insists on [the far-off effect] as necessary to unity, (he) must build on observation, seize essentials and discard the trivial.' "

"Fenollosa [wrote], 'It proves to us what an integral part landscape had come to play in Chinese culture and imagination; and it shows us just why the Zen [Chan] symbolism of nature gave such a splendid insight into characteristic forms.'  The aim of landscape painters, according to him, is to enable those who wish to to 'enjoy a life amidst the luxuries of nature' but 'are debarred from indulging in such pleasures' to 'behold the grandeur of nature without stepping out of their houses.'  The passage seemed to be directly addressed to Stevens, who like the Song artist had always preferred a solitary life in nature and who had always wanted to be able to portray the atmosphere and spirit of nature in his own art. (The author quotes a passage from The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain, and mentions a gift scroll Stevens received from a Korean protege.)"  In fact, Stevens loved 'the luxuries of nature' (the great outdoors), but necessity forced him and Elsie to live a more burgherly existence.  I love the following passage, because it sums up so much of Stevens, the man:

"He was to remark of the delightful gift: 'It represents my ideal of a happy life: to be able to grow old and fat and lie outdoors under the trees thinking about people and things and things and people.'"

six significant landscapes (continued)

I've found some lovely Song dynasty paintings, and thought I would include one here: 'Magpies and Hare.' 

On this post, I will write some of my own thoughts about this poem, but on the next post I will include some lovely excerpts of an article from the Wallace Stevens Journal on the subject of this poem, along with an illustration from my own collection that I think may be the original inspiration for this poem.

So the poem begins in verse i with a poetic version of the original painting, titled 'Listening to the Wind in the Pines,' (look for a copy in the next post).  Then it goes on in veness of poetry, in the metaphor of woman and night.  Verse iii notices the inherent powers that the artist always notices: 'I reach right up to the sun, with my eye.'  The poet also observes the discomfiture  he feels over the less-well-known, less honored chthonic powers of the ants who 'crawl in and out of my shadow.'  Very Jungian.

In verse four, he discusses the imagination, bringing in his significant 'star,' whose creative powers are further extolled in verse v, comparing them to the lesser creativity of industrial man, with his domes, towers, 'chisels of the long streets,' and lamp-posts (artificial illumination).  Verse six characterizes those who cannot access the imagination and intuition as 'rationalists, wearing square hats.'  Since I've begun studying the stoics, I'm beginning to believe we don't properly understand the word 'Reason,' or perhaps it's just that it's been used to mean so many different things.  Certainly for the early stoics 'reason' did not refer to what we call the thinking mind: calculating, analyzing, constructing, figuring out, etc,' but mean the faculty for creativity and intuition, or perhaps came closer to what used to be meant by 'intellect.'  This is the problem with words, they keep changing their meaning!  Anyway, an artist friend and I were recently discussing this poem, and we both agreed that the donning of the sombrero suggests the capacity to take in more of the world, more of 'reality.'  The wholeness of it, relative to human experience.

six significant landscapes, by wallace stevens

i
an old man sits
in the shadow of a pine tree
in china.
he sees larkspur,
blue and white,
at the edge of the shadow,
move in the wind.
his beard moves in the wind.
the pine tree moves in the wind.
thus water flows
over weeds.

ii
the night is of the color
of a woman’s arm:
night, the female,
obscure,
fragrant and supple,
conceals herself.
a pool shines,
like a bracelet
shaken in a dance.

iii
I measure myself
against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
for I reach right up to the sun,
with my eye;
and I reach to the shore of the sea
with my ear.
nevertheless, I dislike
the way the ants crawl
in and out of my shadow.

iv
when my dream was near the moon,
the white folds of its gown
filled with yellow light.
the soles of its feet
grew red.
its hair filled
with certain blue crystallizations
from stars,
not far off.

v
not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
nor the chisels of the long streets,
nor the mallets of the domes
and high towers,
can carve
what one star can carve,
shining through the grape-leaves.

vi
rationalists, wearing square hats,
think , in square rooms,
looking at the floor,
looking at the ceiling.
they confine themselves
to right-angled triangles.
if they tried rhomboids,
cones, waving lines, ellipses —
as for example, the ellipse of the half moon —
rationalists would wear sombreros.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, pp. 58-60)

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slow, but not stopping

My posts on the poetry of Wallace Stevens have slowed down in recent months, but they are not stopping.  One of my goals with this blog is to encourage myself to read more about Wallace Stevens, criticism of his poetry, etc, and it takes time to do this! 

The next poem will be 'Six Significant Landscapes', one of my favorites, and I've found some good critiques to share.  I'm hoping to post it to the web in the next few days.