fabliau of florida, by wallace stevens

Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach,

Move outward into heaven,
Into the alabasters
And night blues.

Foam and cloud are one.
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.

Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.

There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.

(from, Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p.18)

* * * *

I see the ‘barque of phosphor’ as the imagination, the ‘inner light’ of visionary creativity. I read where another poet thought the ‘barque’ was the poet’s hand, writing poetry. It’s a nice enough idea, but the way he got there was a little bit convoluted. Anyway, why can’t the ‘barque of phosphor’ be simply ‘the imagination’, and ‘the alabasters/and night blues./’ the field of the imagination?

Maybe it’s because the imagination gets such bad press these days. It’s seen as only fit for children’s movies and sci-fi films. Imagination is widely despised in our culture as the stuff of unreal fantasy. The truth of imagination is not known. This is the case even though imagination underlies all our highly-valued scientific discoveries, many of our business successes, and all our religions.

Stevens was always careful that the imagination and the real should be close bed-fellows in his poetry. This is part of what makes him the ideal poet.

I love this poem, it’s beautiful. The imagination, ‘barque of phosphor’ (such a lovely trope), is on the verge of another realm. It is ‘on the palmy beach,’ about to voyage forth ‘into heaven.’ What is ‘heaven’ here? Is it the realm of Plato’s Ideas? Is it some kind of higher or ‘other’ reality that is nevertheless a part of our world? The ‘alabasters and night blues’ are such pure intensities of color, and would be identified in daoist language as representative of the ‘void’, the bright, dark field of potential, of chaos aka all possibilities. In this heavenly realm, shapes shift into one another (‘foam and cloud are one/sultry moon-monsters are dissolving’). There will never be an end to these possibilities, to these shape-shiftings, ‘to this droning of the surf.’

As you may notice from my other blog, I’m reading about gnositicism again. And I’m thinking to myself, Wallace Stevens is certainly a poet of Gnostics. Perhaps I ought to change my blog name to the ‘Gnosis of Wallace Stevens.’ I’m having so much fun with Karen King’s ‘The Gospel of Mary of Magdala’ that I’m now re-reading Elaine Pagel’s ‘The Gnostic Gospels.’ The gnostics were visionaries who appreciated the oneness of light and its many forms, namely the many images that communicate the light to us.

For Stevens, the ‘foam and the cloud are one,’ just different forms of water; one is earthly, one is ‘heavenly.’ ‘Moon-monsters are dissolving’; the fears or other horrific visions that may arise in the mind prove themselves to be nothing but dream-images that dissolve, that shift shape and identity, just like everything else in nature. This sort of thing is taught as ‘wisdom’ in Gnostic circles. It’s strange, there are plenty of Gnostics around, we just don’t call them that anymore, and it’s really not much of an issue in religion. But there is still a strong distrust of the imagination. I’m sure we’d all rather that Stevens’ meant his hand rather than the imagination in this poem.

There are ways in which Stevens is NOT a gnostic, however.  I don't think he sees the created world as inherently dark and evil.  Well, perhaps my research will shed more light on this topic as I go along.  At any rate, Stevens, the gnostics, and all of us have to find a way to deal with the fact that the physical world offers pleasures and delights, but also major challenges at the same time, death being not the least.  And that humans have the creative ability to make up stories about it, to make music, and art, and poetry that seem, at least, to suggest something more...but what?  It always seems to come down to faith, some kind of faith, perhaps a religious faith, perhaps a philosophical faith, perhaps a nihilistic faith, perhaps a scientific faith.  I'm very interested to see where Stevens seems to come down on all of this.  There is a story circulating that he became a Catholic at the end of his life.  If so the Catholics are supposed to hold a 'sacramental' view of the created world, but there is a strong strain of gnositicism running through its tradition, thanks in the main to Augustine.

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Gentleperson:

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Thank you in advance.

Warmly,

Craig Lucas

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