Fabliau of Florida
Encyclopedia
"Fabliau of Florida" is a poem in Wallace Stevens
's first book of poetry, Harmonium
.
In a letter written in 1939, Stevens says that he has always liked
this poem, not because of its sense, "because it does not have a great
deal of sense", but because of "the feeling of the words and the
reaction and images that the words create".
Mark Strand
asserts that the poem, though seemingly about the
liminal space between sea and shore, is really about the liminal space
between poem and reality. He suggests that this becomes clear once one
appreciates the pun on the first and last words of the poem, namely
"barque" and
"surf".http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/stevens/poem.html
Some readers are withholding judgment until the pun is explained.
The poem may be compared to Infanta Marina
, which similarly
explores dissolution of boundaries in nature. Here the boundaries are beach
and heaven, foam and cloud.
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
's first book of poetry, Harmonium
Harmonium (poetry collection)
Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...
.
| Fabliau of Florida
|
In a letter written in 1939, Stevens says that he has always liked
this poem, not because of its sense, "because it does not have a great
deal of sense", but because of "the feeling of the words and the
reaction and images that the words create".
Mark Strand
Mark Strand
Mark Strand is an American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. Since 2005, he has been a professor of English at Columbia University.- Biography :...
asserts that the poem, though seemingly about the
liminal space between sea and shore, is really about the liminal space
between poem and reality. He suggests that this becomes clear once one
appreciates the pun on the first and last words of the poem, namely
"barque" and
"surf".http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/stevens/poem.html
Some readers are withholding judgment until the pun is explained.
The poem may be compared to Infanta Marina
Infanta Marina
Infanta Marina is a poem in Wallace Stevens' Harmonium about a seaside princess. Helen Vendler presents the poem as a "double scherzo" on 'her' in the possessive sense and on 'of' in its partitive and possessive sense....
, which similarly
explores dissolution of boundaries in nature. Here the boundaries are beach
and heaven, foam and cloud.