Harmonium (poetry collection) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Harmonium is a book of poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens

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",...

. 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 ("Life Is Motion

Life Is Motion

"Life is Motion" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919, so it is in the publicdomain.This playful poem is notable for its introducing exclamatory sounds,...

") to several hundred ("The Comedian as the Letter C

The Comedian as the Letter C

"The Comedian as the letter C" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's firstbook of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few poems firstpublished in that collection and the last written for it...

"). See footnote 1 for the table of contents. Harmonium was reissued in 1931 with three poems omitted and fourteen new poems added.

The book's first edition sold only a hundred copies before being remaindered, suggesting that the poet and critic Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...

had it right when he wrote in The Nation

The Nation

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

in 1923 that Stevens's wit "is tentative, perverse, and superfine; and it will never be popular." Yet by 1960 the cottage industry of Stevens studies was becoming a "multinational conglomerate," more than fulfilling Van Doren's prophecy that some day a monograph would be written that would pay tribute to Stevens's "delicately enunciated melody, his economy, his clipped cleanliness of line, his gentle excellence."
A library search in the twenty-first century at a typical university could be expected to bring up about 200 books under the topic "Wallace Stevens". The Wallace Stevens Journal has been published by the Wallace Stevens Society since 1979,http://www.wallacestevens.com/ and its editor, John N. Serio, has collected some of the journal's essays in The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens. An audiobook of his complete public domain poems was completed by Librivox in 2007.http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4077
"Anecdote of the Jar

Anecdote of the Jar

"Anecdote of the Jar" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....

" has become not only Stevens's signature but also an icon of American poetry.

Most of Harmoniums poems were published between 1914 and 1923 in various magazines, so most are now in the public domain in America and similar jurisdictions, as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act affects only works first published after 1922.

Earthy Anecdote

Every time the bucks went clattering

Over Oklahoma

A firecat bristled in the way.

Wherever they went,

They went clattering,

Until they swerved

In a swift, circular line

To the right,

Because of the firecat.

Or until they swerved

In a swift, circular line

To the left,

Because of the firecat.

The bucks clattered.

The firecat went leaping,

To the right, to the left,

And

Bristled in the way.

Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes

And slept.

Of what was it the proclamation?

For reasons that perplex critics Harmonium begins with Earthy Anecdote. This poem must be "some sort of manifesto," Helen Vendler

Helen Vendler

Helen Hennessy Vendler is a leading American critic of poetry.-Life and career:Vendler has written books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney. She has been a professor of English at Harvard University since 1984; between 1981 and 1984 she taught...

speculates, "but of what was it the proclamation?"http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/review/03-00a/13-vendler.html

Similar puzzles surround the second poem in Harmonium, "Invective Against Swans

Invective Against Swans

"Invective Against Swans" is a poem by Wallace Stevens from his first book of poetry, Harmonium .-Overview:The poem seems to be an insult poem slamming swans, of all things, calling them ganders and...

". Why would Stevens write an insult poem attacking swans? Why the aspic nipple in the third poem, "In the Carolinas"? What manner of nude "scuds the glitters" on a weed, as in "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage

The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage

"The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the 1919, so it is in the public domain...

"? Who is the giant in "The Plot Against the Giant

The Plot Against the Giant

"The Plot Against the Giant" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain....

" and why can he be undone by heavenly labials? What is a "Gubbinal

Gubbinal

"Gubbinal" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It is in the public domain according to Librivox.It can be read as one of his "poems of epistemology", as B. J. Leggett styles it in his Nietzschean reading of Stevens' perspectivism, a minimalistic statement of his...

"? Why does the listener in "The Snow Man

The Snow Man

"The Snow Man" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. "The Snow Man" was first published in 1921 in the journal Poetry, volume 19, October 1921 and is in the public domain.-Overview:...

" become "nothing himself" and behold "the nothing that is"? Is "The Emperor of Ice Cream

The Emperor of Ice Cream

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is a celebrated poem from Wallace Stevens' first collection of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain...

" simply a nonsense ditty or does it have some discursive meaning? Is Crispin's voyage in "The Comedian as the Letter C

The Comedian as the Letter C

"The Comedian as the letter C" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's firstbook of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few poems firstpublished in that collection and the last written for it...

" a success or a failure? What is the mistake that caliper makes in "Last Looks at the Lilacs

Last Looks at the Lilacs

Last Looks at the Lilacs is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923 and is therefore still under copyright...

" when he scratches his buttocks and tells the divine ingenue that the bloom of lilacs is the fragrance of vegetal? Should the reader be amused or appalled by the remarkable funeral procession in "The Worms at Heaven's Gate

The Worms at Heaven's Gate

The Worms at Heaven's Gate is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1916 and is therefore in the public domain....

"? And so on.

A "flavorously original poetic personality"

Poet and editor Harriet Monroe

Harriet Monroe

Harriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet and patron of the arts. She is best known as the founding publisher and long-time editor of Poetry Magazine, which made its debut in 1912. As a supporter of the poets Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S...

, who founded Poetry magazine in 1912, wrote in 1924,

[T]here was never a more flavorously original poetic personality than the author of this book. If one seeks sheer beauty of sound, phrase, rhythm, packed with prismatically colored ideas by a mind at once wise and whimsical, one should open one's eyes and ears, sharpen one's wits, widen one's sympathies to include rare and exquisite aspects of life, and then run for this volume of iridescent poems.

The poet Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...

, Stevens's lifelong ally and friend, wrote shortly after the book's publication of Stevens's "achieved remoteness" of imagination, likening the poems to a painting that Tu Muh commented upon:

Powerful is the painting... and high is it hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion."

"Sea Surface full of Clouds

Sea Surface full of Clouds

"Sea Surface full of Clouds" is a poem from the second, 1931,edition of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. It was firstpublished in 1924, so it is restricted by copyright...

" illustrates this quality. Although Joan Richardson's reading makes the case that the poem's "true subject" is an extended holiday that Stevens and his wife, Elsie, took in the fall of 1923, and specifically that the true subject is the poet's sexuality, rather it is the powerful "poetry of the subject" that displays Stevens's genius and draws readers to the poem, as Tu Muh was drawn to the painting.

Moore casts Stevens as an explorer of the exotic who takes refuge in a "riot of gorgeousness." She adds that although "Mr. Stevens is never inadvertently crude, one is conscious...of a deliberate bearishness — a shadow of acrimonious, unprovoked contumely." Stevens seems to admit as much in "The Weeping Burgher

The Weeping Burgher

"The Weeping Burgher" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.Stevens confesses to a strange malice that distorts the world as given...

". The Death of a Soldier

The Death of a Soldier

"The Death of a Soldier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first bookof poetry, Harmonium.The poem uses free verse to describe the death of a soldier in a detached manner common among reductionist poets.-Overview:...

may have been one of the poems she had in mind, because of its almost brutal naturalism.

Edmund Wilson, writing in the New Republic in 1924, spoke without pretence for most readers of Stevens: "Even when you do not know what he is saying, you know that he is saying it well." This 'Wilson effect' is no doubt linked to Stevens's Adagia aphorism, "Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully." Colloquy with a Polish Aunt

Colloquy with a Polish Aunt

"Colloquy with a Polish Aunt" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first bookof poetry, Harmonium. Itwas first published in 1919.Revue des deux mondes is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829...

is a good candidate for a Wilson award.

Matthew Josephson ranked Stevens among the best of contemporary poets, writing in 1923 that Stevens exhibits both a poetry of sensuousness and a metaphysical poetry. He favors the latter, as in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird and Anecdote of the Jar, predicting that they will be "spell-binding for hundreds of years". By contrast Charles Altieri has recently expressed a preference for the poetry of sensuousness. Stevens matters as a poet, according to Altieri, because of his commitment to the primacy of the senses.http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~altieri/manuscripts/intentionality.htm "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", which peppers the reader with visual images, would serve as a simple example, "Sea Surface full of Clouds" as more complex.

A sublimation which does not permit a sequel

The Imagist poet and critic John Gould Fletcher wrote in 1923 that because of his honesty Stevens stands "head and shoulders" above the internationally famous aesthetes like Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, the Sitwells

The Sitwells

The Sitwells , from Scarborough, North Yorkshire, were three siblings, who formed an identifiable literary and artistic clique around themselves in London in the period roughly 1916 to 1930...

, and Valéry

Paul Valéry

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

. He defended Stevens' "obscurity" as deriving from "a wealth of meaning and allusion." He discerned a poet "definitely out of tune with life and with his surroundings, and...seeking an escape into a sphere of finer harmony between instinct and intelligence." "The Wind Shifts

The Wind Shifts

"The Wind Shifts" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the publicdomain....

" is one poem that supports Fletcher's reading. He warned that Stevens faced "a clear choice of evils: he must either expand his range to take in more of human experience, or give up writing altogether. Harmonium is a sublimation which does not permit a sequel." Stevens seems to have grasped both horns of the dilemma, writing little for several years after Harmonium and then returning with Ideas of Order and subsequent collections that emphasize what Fletcher would classify as metaphysical poetry. Buttel prefers to view the later work as "a kind of exfoliation" of his earlier style, the later poems "adumbrated" in Harmonium. (Stevens's first idea for the title of The Collected Poems was The Whole of Harmonium.)

The Cool Master

Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.-Life and career:...

, suspicious of international influences on American poetry, criticized Stevens in 1924 as a "conscious aesthete" at war with reality, achieving little beyond "an amusing precosity". He can only "smile indulgently" at the "childish" love of alliteration and assonance in "Chieftan Iffucan of Azcan in caftan" or "Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns", and he is irritated by the confusing titles: The Emperor of Ice Cream, The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage, Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs

"Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in The Dial in 1922 and is therefore in the public domain....

. On the evidence of the exquisite miniature "Tea", Alfred Kreymberg had been led to expect a "slender, ethereal being

Ethereal being

Ethereal beings, according to some belief systems and occult theories, are mystic entities that usually are not made of ordinary matter. Despite the fact that they are believed to be essentially incorporeal, they do interact in physical shapes with the material universe and travel between the...

, shy and sensitive," according to Milton Bates, who continues, "the poet he actually met at a social gathering for Rogue contributors stood over six feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds."

To the caricature of "aesthete" Gorham Munson added "dandy" in "The Dandyism of Wallace Stevens", objecting to what he took to be Stevens's indifference to political and social issues of the era. Munson was impressed by the influence of French: "The whole tendency of his vocabulary is, in fact, toward the lightness and coolness and transparency of French." In view of suspicions about international influences at that time, this may have been unfortunate praise. However, Stevens would have accepted it, having written in Adagia, "French and English constitute a single language."

The epithet "dandy" became "hedonist" in Yvor Winters

Yvor Winters

Arthur Yvor Winters was an American poet and literary critic.-As modernist:Winters's early poetry, which appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, was written in the modernist idiom, and was heavily influenced both by Native American...

's 1943 essay "Wallace Stevens, or the Hedonist's Progress", which objected that Stevens did not give primacy to the intellect or to orthodox Christian beliefs. Winters characterized Stevens as "a cool master", in an essay with that title, in which he describes Stevens as "this greatest of living and of American poets".

Possibly the most disgruntled reader of Stevens's early poems was the Irish-American poet Shaemas O'Scheel, the author of an Irish war poem, They Went Forth to Battle, But They Always Fell. Reviewing Stevens's poems that appeared in the "War Number" (November 1914) of the journal Poetry. O"Sheel, writing in a competing journal, condemned the entire "War Number" but cited Stevens's Phases in particular as "an excellent example" of poetry that is "untruthful, and nauseating to read."

The Poetry of Sensuousness

Favoring Harmoniums "sensualism", as exampled in Metaphors of a Magnifico

Metaphors of a Magnifico

"Metaphors of a Magnifico" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1918, so it is in the public domain...

, marks a divide among critics, for there are many who, like Vendler, champion the later poetry. "I think, with others, that Stevens' powers increased with age," she writes.

Josephson chooses these lines from Banal Sojourn

Banal Sojourn

"Banal Sojourn" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....

to illustrate Stevens's poetry of sensuousness:

The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black.

The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air.

Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom.

Pardie! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew...

Josephson's objection to this side of Stevens is that he in his next book "would have to be more and more intimate and scandalous,
ad absurdum", and that already this side "has influenced many of his younger contemporaries, and in them, at least, leads to pretense, and murkiness."

Anti-Poetry

There are those who maintain that both the aesthete and sensualist readings overlook the American burgher in Stevens, the successful insurance executive possessed of "something of the mountainous gruffness that we recognize in ourselves as American — the stamina, the powerful grain showing in a kind of indifference." This character trait may be reflected in the element of anti-poetry in Stevens's work, as in his choice of the word 'stupid' in Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores

Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores

"Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921 and is therefore in the public domain.The subject of the poem is boredom of an afternoon and being saved...

, or the "tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk" of A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium .Milton J. Bates interprets the poem as a "shocking version" of...

.

"There are in Stevens many moments rich in beauty," Robert Rehder writes, "but he does not want them to be too sweet and resists 'the bawds of euphony'." Stevens's fondness for American locale helps him temper many such moments.
A poem like The Jack-Rabbit

The Jack-Rabbit

The Jack-Rabbit is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first bookof poetry,Harmonium . It was first published in that collection, so it is still under copyright, but it is quoted here as justified by fair use in order to facilitate scholarly commentary....

illustrates his affection for rural and frontier America and the native folk tradition, leaving no doubt that his poetry is rooted in America. Poems like Ploughing on Sunday

Ploughing on Sunday

Ploughing on Sunday is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1919 and is therefore in the public domain....

. The Doctor of Geneva

Doctor of Geneva

"The Doctor of Geneva" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . The poem was first published in 1921, so it is free of copyright.The doctor of Geneva, perhaps a doctor like John Calvin used to plumbing...

, and Bantam in Pine-Woods

Bantam in Pine-Woods

"Bantams in Pine-Woods" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922 in the poetry journal Dial, along with five other poems, all under the title "Revue". It is in the public domain....

are an implicit tribute to Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

and other American poets, including himself, making evident his pride in the poetic revolution taking place on the North American continent. Indian names are another aspect of Stevens's Americana, as in the title of Stars at Tallapoosa

Stars at Tallapoosa

"Stars at Tallapoosa" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain....

. Movement away from European influences and toward the responsibility of writing distinctly American poetry may be traced to Anecdote of the Jar

Anecdote of the Jar

"Anecdote of the Jar" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....

(1919).

Bates suggests that Stevens the American burgher was self-conscious about the poses of aesthete and dandy, writing,

It is as though Stevens, having assumed the pose of aesthete, had suddenly caught sight of himself in a mirror; thereafter, his dismay and amusement became an integral part of the pose. The same might be said of his dandiacal poems, for the dandy is by definition someone who lives always as though reflected in a mirror; the dandy's vaunted wit sprang in the first place from an awareness of his own absurd pretensions. Further compounding the aesthetic dandy's self-consciousness, in Stevens' case, was his burgherly sense of his own foppish creations.

Allen Tate suggests a different interpretation in maintaining that Stevens's dandyism was "the perfect surface beneath which plays an intense Puritanism". The burgher does not look on with ironic dismay, but rather uses the poses to achieve reticence about self-disclosure. The poses allow modulation in revelation of the poet and his world. Tony Sharpe expresses a similar thought when he refers to Stevens as "that exponent of American loneliness."

Meaning and Syntax

Stevens is often called a symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

poet. Vendler notes that the first task undertaken by the early critics of Stevens was to "decode" his "symbols". (The scare-quotes are Vendler's.) Color symbolism is a vital part of Stevens' poetic technique, according to the symbolist critic Veena Rani Prasad, who proposes the following color scheme for reading Stevens.

blue - imagination;
green - the physical
red - reality
gold - sun
purple - delight in the imagination

Vendler accuses the decoders of producing "some commentary of extraordinary banality", and favors appreciating Stevens's poems by understanding their syntactical novelty rather than by decoding the meanings of their symbols. Stevens lends support to this position, or at least expresses skepticism about 'decoding', when he writes in Adagia, "A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have." The upshot of Vendler's syntactical approach is to situate his poems in the realm of possibilities and potentialities, according to Beverly Maeder, who credits her with pointing the way.

Meaning or semantics is fundamentally about word-world relationships, which are particularly problematic in Stevens's poetry. His syntactical innovations are employed to frustrate simple answers about the relationship between language and reality. For instance, his use of the verb seem gives priority to appearances or aspects: "Let be be the finale of seem

The Emperor of Ice Cream

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is a celebrated poem from Wallace Stevens' first collection of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain...

". Also orienting the poems away from certainties about an unproblematically given world are similes with like or as, the hypothetical as if, the modal might, the conditional, sentence fragments, optatives, questions, and protean usage of the verb to be (as when an observer beholds "Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is"

The Snow Man

'true subject' versus 'the poetry of the subject'

Stevens's symbolism is in aid of a polarity between "things as they are" and "things imagined". This is at least often the true subject of his poetry. However, as the exchange between Joan Richarson and Helen Vendler attests, the true subject of a poem can be a matter of some controversy. For one thing, it can look 'up' to the ideas about imagination/reality, or it can look 'down' to the problems or pathologies of Stevens's life.

Up for grabs is whether "things as they are" are to be understood in naturalistic terms (a tree is a tree) or in idealist

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

or perspectival

Perspectivism

Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made...

terms (a tree reduces to the various tree-perspectives) or Kantian terms (there is something, whatever it is, that is responsible for the tree, or the various tree-perspectives: Kant

KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

's ding-an-sich). The tree in Of the Surface of Things

Of the Surface of Things

"Of the Surface of Things" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....

poses an interesting test of such philosophical interpretations. Also there is a moment in Stevens's poetic development when he realizes that the polarity of things as they are and things imagined is not safe, when red bleeds into blue in Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

"Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few Harmonium poems first published in that volume, so it is still under copyright...

, Stevens's brutal encounter with Berserk. (See also The Cuban Doctor

The Cuban Doctor

"The Cuban Doctor" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the journal Poetry in October, 1921, so it is in the public domain....

for a comparable encounter with the Indian.)

With an emphatic warning about the danger of depending on mechanical symbol mapping to understand Stevens's poems, one can propose that imagination, order and the ideal are often symbolized by blue, the moon, the polar north, winter, music, poetry, and art. Actuality and disorder are often represented by yellow, the sun, the tropic south, summer, physical nature. For instance, sun and moon represent this duality in Harmoniums The Comedian as the letter C

The Comedian as the Letter C

"The Comedian as the letter C" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's firstbook of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few poems firstpublished in that collection and the last written for it...

, in which the protagonist, Crispin, conceives his voyage of self-discovery as a poet to be

An up and down between two elements,

A fluctuating between sun and moon,

Sun and Moon comprise an important polarity for Stevens. according to Edward Kessler, who also picks out North and South, Music and the Sea, the Statue and the Wilderness, and Colors and "Domination of Black".

Emotional deprivation

At least as controversial as the question about symbolism is whether and how Stevens's personal life should be read into his poetry. William Carlos Williams was not reluctant to do so, writing some months after Stevens's death, "He was a dandy at heart. You never saw Stephens in sloppy clothes. His poems are the result." The remarkable "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

"Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. It was first published in 1918.Quoted here is the eighth canto...

" is particularly disputed with regard to the relevance of the biographical. Referring to the fact that Stevens's marriage to Elsie turned cold, Milton Bates writes, "Emotional deprivation became to some extent the condition of his craft, the somber backdrop for the motley antics of Harmonium." ("Monocle" may be compared to "From the Misery of Don Joost

From the Misery of Don Joost

From the Misery of Don Joost is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It is in the public domain, having been published in the journal Poetry in 1921 ....

".) To balance the ledger, the love poem "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow

Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow

Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923 and is therefore still under copyright...

" may be contrasted with "Monocle".

Another dimension of deprivation to be taken into account is addressed by Stevens in "The Place of the Solitaires

The Place of the Solitaires

"The Place of the Solitaires" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the journal Poetry in October, 1919, so it is in the public domain....

, which touches on the solitary discipline of writing poetry. See also "Two Figures In Dense Violet Night

Two Figures In Dense Violet Night

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923., so it is still under copyright. Only its first stanza is quoted here....

", which can be read as a humorous anecdote about the gauche male, or a meditation on the lover's otherness, or the poet's challenge to the imagination of the reader.

As Vendler notes in a discussion of the fluidity of self-reference in Stevens, the impersonal "one" is sometimes favored over "I" in order to enable disclosure of suffering: "One has a malady, here, a malady"

Banal Sojourn

"Banal Sojourn" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....

. And he often refers to himself in the third-person as part of an effort to see himself from the outside: "When this yokel comes maundering"

The Plot Against the Giant

"The Plot Against the Giant" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain....

. however, note the use of the first-person in "The Man whose Pharynx was bad

The Man whose Pharynx was bad

"The Man whose Pharynx was bad" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921, so it is in the public domain.One point of entry into this poem is Stevens's attitude towards the weather...

Enigmatic Naturalism

Although Stevens held that "All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees = Umbrellas", his imagination revealed nature as enigmatic. Bates notes that many of Stevens's images and symbols "combine clarity with an air of mystery",. "The Public Square

The Public Square

"The Public Square" is a poem from the secondedition ofWallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. It was firstpublished in 1923, so it is one ofthe few poems in the collection that is not free of copyright, but it...

" illustrates this quality. Buttel explains this mysterious naturalism as Stevens's response to the ethos of the Symbolists, which brought him to take his earlier transcendentalist leanings, towards a union of nature and the ideal, "in the direction of the dark and mysterious". He was led to become urgently concerned with conveying the indefinable in the poem itself. "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician

The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician

"The Curtain in the House of the Metaphysician" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.An image like the one in "Curtains" is the "crisp lettuce" that...

" is as good an example as any. He redirects the longing to know a transcendent realm into nature itself, salving the frustrated platonic desire with his poetic gifts, notably the non-discursive effects borrowed from sound and sight, music and painting. He is ironic, as in "Invective Against Swans" and "Anatomy of Monotony

Anatomy of Monotony

"Anatomy of Monotony" is a poem from the second, 1931, editionof Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. Unlike most ofthe poems in this collection, it was first published in 1931, so it is...

", about the 'spiritual' demand to transcend nature. Another aspect of Stevens's naturalism is his close attention to the perceptual act, particularly as not simply mirroring reality but rather as disclosing it in this or that creative aspect. This is arguably the subject of "Tattoo".

There is an issue about whether Stevens converted to Christianity on his deathbed,http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Stevens/conversion.html but his poetry predominantly expresses a naturalistic outlook in which the religious longing for eternal bliss is channeled into a poetic response to nature. "Lunar Paraphrase

Lunar Paraphrase

"Lunar Paraphrase" is a poem from the second edition ofWallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. One of Stevens's"war poems" from "Lettres d'un Soldat" , it is in the publicdomain....

" can be read as such a response, despite its mention of religious figures. This reading would support what he wrote in Adagia: "After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." This enigmatic naturalism is given graceful and elegiac expression in "Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning (poem)

"Sunday Morning" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium. Published in part in the November 1915 issue of Poetry, then in full in 1923 in Harmonium, it is now in the public domain....

". Stevens's skepticism about an afterlife is evident in "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb

Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb

"Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1921, so it is in the public domain....

". The finality of death is given emphatic expression in "Cortège for Rosenbloom

Cortège for Rosenbloom

Cortege for Rosenbloom is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921 and is therefore in the public domain in the United States and similar jurisdictions....

". "Negation

Stevens Negation

"Negation" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first bookof poetry, Harmonium. Itwas first published in 1918, so it is in the publicdomain.This poem was Section VII of the poem—sequence "Lettres d'un Soldat"...

"s witty depiction of God as a bungling potter indicates that the Deity didn't have a place in Stevens's belief system.

The Mind of China

Stevens's interest in Asian art, notably the prints of Utamaro (See canto III of "Monocle") is discernible in his poetry, as in Harmonium's Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores

Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores

. Should the reader note this and move on, or does it fortify the critiques of Stevens's aestheticism? Moore thought that Stevens's orientialism was a deep trait: "In his positiveness, aplomb, and verbal security, he [Stevens] has the mind of China." Buttel offers a nuanced judgment when he writes, "Purging the excesses of this [orientalist] mode from his verse, he became attracted to the dazzling color and exotic qualities of the American South, the Caribbean, Latin America, and modern French painting. Nomad Exquisite

Nomad Exquisite

Nomad Exquisite is a poem by Wallace Stevens originally published in Harmonium in 1923.Here is a link to a site where you can read the poem: Here are some comments and questions as a way to begin thinking about the poem:...

illustrates this shift in the later poems of Harmonium.

Even so, orientalism left its mark, in delicacy of effect and in such details as 'Utamaro's beauties,' 'umbrellas in Java,' and 'a woman of Lhassa.'" The latter refers to the final stanza of Anecdote of Men by the Thousands

Anecdote of Men by the Thousands

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousands" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published previous to 1923 and is therefore in the public domain, according to Librivox....

The dress of a woman in Llhassa,

In its place,

Is an invisible element of that place

Made visible.

The phrase "Utamaro's beauties" comes from canto III of "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

"Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. It was first published in 1918.Quoted here is the eighth canto...

You know how Utamaro's beauties sought

The end of love in their all-speaking braids.

The phrase "umbrellas in Java" comes from Tea.

The influence of Japanese art, specifically haiku, is also notable. The first "landscape" in Six Significant Landscapes

Six Significant Landscapes

Stevens"Six Significant Landscapes" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1916, so it is in the public domain....

is a case in point, as is Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

"Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium. It consists of thirteen short, separate poems, all of which mention blackbirds in some way. Although inspired by haiku, none of the segments is actually haiku...

. Buttel holds that "the objectivity, indirectness, and condensation" of haiku "seem to have had a more beneficial and lasting effect on his style than the merely ornamental details of orientalism." This effect may be responsible for the sense in which he honors the Imagist

Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...

injunction to "Use no superfluous word," as in such poems as Valley Candle

Valley Candle

Valley Candle is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It is in the public domain according to Librivox, having been first published prior to the 1923 publication year of Harmonium....

, which refers literally to an image, and The Load Of Sugar-Cane

The Load Of Sugar-Cane

The Load Of Sugar-Cane is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.In her review of Harmonium Marianne Moore picks out "The Load of Sugar-Cane" for praise because it achieves its splendor cumulatively...

, with its image of a red turban. Light-hearted Imagism is evident in the parakeet of The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws

The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws

The Bird With The Coppery, Keen Claws is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1921, so it is in the public domain. Librivox has made the poem available in voice recording in its The Complete Public Domain Poems of Wallace Stevens.Vivid...

The gaudiness of poetry

In a letter written in 1933 Stevens selects The Emperor of Ice Cream

The Emperor of Ice Cream

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is a celebrated poem from Wallace Stevens' first collection of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain...

as his favorite among his poems because it contains something of "the essential gaudiness of poetry".http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/letters.htm (Later, in 1939, he wrote a letter expressing fondness for "Fabliau of Florida

Fabliau of Florida

"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 likedthis poem, not because of its sense, "because it does not have a great...

".) The gaudiness of color images is striking in such poems as Domination of Black

Domination of Black

Domination of Black is a poem in Wallace Stevens' Harmonium, first published in 1916 and later selected by him as his best poem for the anthology This is my best....

and Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1915, and it is in the public domain....

, which also associate Stevens with the imagist

Imagism

movement in early twentieth-century art. There may be a link between the gaudiness of poetry and the title of the book. His original choice was The Grand Poem: Preliminary Minutiae, but he may have chosen the title Harmonium for its eponymous relation to a harmonium

Harmonium

A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion...

— that is, a gaudy little organ-like calliope, suggesting Calliope

Calliope

In Greek mythology, Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and is now best known as Homer's muse, the inspiration for the Odyssey and the Iliad....

, muse of poetry. Note also the Adagia thesis that words are "the only melodeon".

The gaudiness of Stevens's poetry endears him to many, even those who, with a wink, profess to be among his enemies.http://www.wesleyan.edu/wstevens/cohen.html It has earned him the sobriquet "the Matisse of poets". Buttel particularly, with reference to Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning (poem)

and Matisse's Odalisque paintings, is insistent on Stevens and Matisse as kindred spirits. Others are impressed by his affinity with Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

, viewing Stevens as sharing Klee's delight in the playful and evocative ways in which a
minimal use of color and scene could create much larger panoramas. "The colors and linear forms in Stevens' poetry evoke images
that dance and tease the imagination," Feinstein writes, "in much the same way as the visual
images in Klee's paintings."

Marianne Moore favored a comparison to Rousseau

Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...

, likening the effect that Stevens was trying to achieve with "Rousseau

Henri Rousseau

's paintings of banana leaves and alligators". Floral Decorations for Bananas

Floral Decorations for Bananas

"Floral Decorations for Bananas" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published Measure 26 "Floral Decorations for Bananas" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published Measure 26 "Floral Decorations for...

nicely illustrates Moore's comparison. Another example of the painterly virtues of Stevens's Harmonium poems is The Apostrophe to Vincentine

The Apostrophe to Vincentine

"The Apostrophe to Vincentine " is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published before 1923 and is therefore in the public domain according to Librivox....

, which Buttel views as an instance of Stevens's practice of evoking reality through resemblances between the world and the visual or tactile qualities of paintings. Another example is Explanation

Stevens Explanation

"Explanation" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain....

and its allusion to Chagall.

The musical imagist

The critic Paul Rosenfeld described Stevens as "the musical imagist". "To The One Of Fictive Music

To The One Of Fictive Music

To The One Of Fictive Music is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain....

" is one deep and difficult justification for this description, invoking the muse of poetry for "an image that is sure" in a kind of music that "gives motion to perfection more serene" than other forms of music summoned by the human condition. This primacy is given an exaggerated statement in the Adagia aphorism, "Words are the only melodeon."

Stevens might also be called the Vivaldi of poets because of the importance to him of the seasons

The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)

The Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season...

and weather generally. Harold Bloom chides Vendler for writing in On Extended Wings that "the only phenomenon to which he [Stevens] is passionately attached is the weather", replying, "If Mrs. Vendler were wholly correct, readers deeply moved by Stevens might have to murmur that never has so much been made out of the weather."http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/21/home/stevens-vendler.html. Responding to the seasons, nature, and the world generally is the work of the imagination, whether the poet's or anyone else's, and failure of imagination is associated with death, as in "Another Weeping Woman

Another Weeping Woman

"Another Weeping Woman" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.This poem tells of a woman who is grieving for someone who has died.The triumvirate of imagination, world, and reality is at work....

". The seasons also serve for Stevens's musings on the passage of time, as in "The Man whose Pharynx was bad

The Man whose Pharynx was bad

". Sebastian Gardner shows that the four seasons can be understood as fundamental to Stevens's poetic project, and that a corresponding philosophical project is implicit in his work, assigning different metaphysical import to the aspects of reality brought out in the poetry of each of the seasons.

The Vivaldi of poets has also been accused of "some hazy notion of an analogy between music and poetry."http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/21/home/stevens-harmonium.html Whether hazy or not, the notion colors such poems as Harmoniums "Peter Quince at the Clavier

Peter Quince at the Clavier

"Peter Quince at the Clavier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.The poem was first published in 1915 in the "little magazine" Others: A Magazine of the New Verse , edited by Alfred Kreymborg....

" and "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 Vendler likens to a "double scherzo". She also observes that for Stevens "looking and hearing, imagery and musicality, occupy equal ground". Essayist Llewelyn Powys also pursues this notion, finding that "each unexpected verbal manipulation conceals some obscure harmony of sense and sound which not only provokes intellectual appreciation, but in the strangest possible way troubles the imagination." Anca Rosu gives priority to sound: "To Plato's metaphysics of sight Stevens responds with a metaphysics of sound."

See Michael O. Stegman's "Checklist of Musical Compositions Relating to Stevens" for a considerable number of musical tributes to Stevens, such as John Gardner's "Five Partsongs to Poems by Wallace Stevens".

A particular comic quality

Stevens the ironist should not be overlooked. Irony (arguably) suffuses "The Ordinary Women

The Ordinary Women

The Ordinary Women is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium.Opinion is divided about whether the poem expresses Stevens' distaste for romanticism in art, a "mordant satire...of all the things that other poems hold sacred"; or whether the poem is about "the refreshment that...

", "Invective Against Swans

Invective Against Swans

", "Nuances of a Theme by Williams

Nuances of a Theme by Williams

"Nuances of a Theme by Williams" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium.The italicized first lines make up a poem, "El Hombre", by Stevens' modernist contemporary William Carlos Williams. The poem was first published in Little Review 5...

", and other poems in Harmonium. Also a sense of humor is a significant characteristic of the collection, as indicated by many of the poem titles and in some cases by the content as well. Both title and content of "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges

Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges

Cy est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et les Unze Mille Vierge is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1915 in the magazine Rogue, so it is in the public domain. Butell characterizes it as one of the first two poems to "successfully combine wit...

" testify to this lighter side. Samuel French Morse, who categorized the years 1914-1930 as the Harmonium years, wrote that nothing Stevens was to write later would achieve "the particular comic quality of these early exercises" in Harmonium, though the tone of the poetry would deepen. Even Stevens's experimentation with perspective, coolly executed in "The Snow Man

The Snow Man

", is presented with bawdy humor in a poem like "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium .Milton J. Bates interprets the poem as a "shocking version" of...

". One vein of Stevens's poetic humour expresses his reaction against the conventions of the Victorian tradition. Depression Before Spring

Depression Before Spring

Depression Before Spring is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1918 and is therefore in the public domain....

for instance refuses to gush about spring as a season of renewal; it compares a fair maiden's flaxen hair to cow spit; and it introduces such "unpoetic" lines as "Ho! Ho!" and

But ki-ki-ri-ki

Briings no rou-cou

No rou-cou-cou.

Another aspect of Stevens's sense of humor is the cleverness of such poems as "Anecdote of Canna

Anecdote of Canna

"Anecdote of Canna" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium .In the poem's legerdemain the cryptic middle stanza conceals the sleight of hand. Poor X wakes in his sleep and consequently his eye clings to the canna forever. The cleverness of the poem links it to "The Worms...

" and "Hymn From a Watermelon Pavilion

Hymn From a Watermelon Pavilion

Hymn From A Watermelon Pavilion is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain....

", which subtly exploit within-a-dream scenarios.

Stevens seems to have attempted to achieve a balance between somber and light in the Harmonium collection. For instance, though most of the fourteen poems introduced in the second (1931) edition, like "Sea Surface full of Clouds", are somber, "The Revolutionists stop for Orangeade

The Revolutionists stop for Orangeade

"The Revolutionists stop for Orangeade" is a poem from the second, 1931,edition of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,Harmonium. It was firstpublished in 1931, so it is restricted by copyright until 2025 in...

" is light.

Knowing the ultimate Plato

In the ancient quarrel between poetic imagination and philosophical reason, Stevens sides with the former, though he emphasizes not an unchanging mental faculty but rather the continual work of imaginative reconstruction of the material the world provides --- turning ever-changing shades of green into ever-changing shades of blue, so to speak. One of Stevens's themes is the contrast between an imaginative, poetic disclosure of reality as opposed to rationalist abstraction. See for example "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds

On the Manner of Addressing Clouds

"On the Manner of Addressing Clouds" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1921 according to Librivox and is therefore in the public domain....

". Stevens defends the sensuous ground he favors against the philosophers' Plato in "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile

Homunculus et la Belle Etoile

Homunculus et la Belle Etoile is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919.The poem pursues a contrast between poeticimagination and philosophical reasoning, the latter understood as...

", contrasting and recommending instead "the ultimate Plato".

Despite Stevens's commitment to this theme, interpreters have not been prevented from exploring the philosophical implications of his poetry. A few poems from Harmonium, on no account excluding "The Comedian as the Letter C

The Comedian as the Letter C

"The Comedian as the letter C" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's firstbook of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few poems firstpublished in that collection and the last written for it...

", "O Florida, Venereal Soil

O Florida, Venereal Soil

O Florida, Venereal Soil is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the journal Dial, volume 73, July 1922 and is therefore in the public domain....

", "Bantams in Pine Woods", "Palace of the Babies

Palace of the Babies

Palace of the Babies is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1916 and is therefore in the public domain....

", and "Theory

Stevens Theory

"Theory" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain.The instances are instances of imagination at work, as in creation of a poem...

" are occasionally mentioned as examples of pataphysics, an attempt to go beyond metaphysics that is sometimes cited as responsible for the high tides of language in Stevens's poetry. It has also been read as expressing philosophies as various as Santayana

Santayana

The surname Santayana may refer to*George Santayana, an American philosopher*Antonio Gutiérrez de Otero y Santayana, a Spanish Lieutenant General best known for repelling Admiral Nelson's attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797...

's, Nietzsche's and Kant

KANT

's. (See "The Snow Man

The Snow Man

" and "Gubbinal

Gubbinal

" for some references.) Many would agree with Simon Critchley, who favors a broadly Kantian reading, that Stevens was the philosophically most important poet writing in English in the twentieth century. Anca Rosu reads Stevens as claiming poetry as a way of thinking and reaching for the knowledge usually associated with philosophy. This brings him close to Martin Heidegger, she writes, but "the notable difference is that while Heidegger's passion for poetry threatens his profession -- philosophy, as it has traditionally been understood -- with its end, Stevens, being a poet, can only triumph in the triumph of poetry." She finds deeper philosophical affinities between Stevens and the American philosophers William James and George Santayana, "who themselves challenged the tenets of traditional philosophy by stressing the cultural construction of such notions as reality, truth, and knowledge." She emphasizes that Stevens's purpose is not to replace philosophy with poetry but "to enhance the poetic and endow it with philosophical import."

Locality

As for Earthy Anecdote, Vendler believes that "this apparently trivial little poem" revealed to Stevens how much his art depended on obstructions and the consequent swerves they provoked. On the other (dramatically different) hand, Nicholson reads it as an anecdote about planet Earth. The bucks are spinning planets and the firecat is the Sun — so the poem's title is a pun.

Stevens is on record as saying that he "intended something quite concrete: actual animals, not original chaos," commenting on Walter Pach's illustration for his poem, which he judged "just the opposite of my idea". If chaos is just the opposite of his idea, Nicholson's astronomical interpretation might fall under the same censure, and perhaps Vendler's "poet's struggles" reading as well. Martha Strom's approach may be more in line with Stevens's idea. She explains the position of the poem at the beginning of Harmonium as signifying Stevens's departure from the dominant 'local' school, which enjoined the poet to stay close to his roots and locale. She writes,

Stevens locates the bucks in Oklahoma, which firmly situates the poem in the "local" school of writing, but he imbues the localist donnée — a particular landscape, some bucks, and a cat in Oklahoma — with the motion of his imagination, and the flat "local" scene acquires texture and life.

She quotes from an editorial on 'Local Color' that Stevens wrote in 1900 while an undergraduate at Harvard and president of The Harvard Advocate, proposing that Stevens's interest in overcoming locality can be traced back to those days.

So many of the stories submitted to us of late have had their scenes laid in and about the College...that a word in regard to local color may not be out of place. It is of course possible for an amusing event to take place in the Yard....But because an event does take place in the Yard does not make it amusing....Nevertheless it seems to be a popular fallacy with a great many contributors that it is only necessary to stay within the shadow of the dormitories to write an entertaining story or poem.

This departure from the strictures of "locality" reaches a fulfillment in the final poem that Stevens wrote for Harmonium, The Comedian as the Letter C

The Comedian as the Letter C

"The Comedian as the letter C" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's firstbook of poetry, Harmonium . It was one of the few poems firstpublished in that collection and the last written for it...

, in which the poet voyages away from his local soil into a sea of poetic possibilities that, he supposes, will occasion his artistic growth. However, Crispin is left there at an impasse, frustrated in his hope to find roots in some locale or other. One reading of Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

"Tea at the Palaz of Hoon" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921, so it is in the public domain....

is that it anticipates the direction that Stevens would take in the thirties, towards a pure poetry that would be independent of locale.

The Whole of Harmonium

Yet another approach to interpreting Earthy Anecdote and its place in Harmonium is suggested by Richard Blessing's recommendation that the individual poems should be read holistically, as contributing to a single, unified, grand poem. In the first instance the whole would be Harmonium, and beyond that 'The Whole of Harmonium' would be Stevens's collected poems. Such an appeal to the organic unity of his oeuvre as a whole may belong to the best response to the characterization of Harmonium as a motley or miscellany. For instance, the holistic view would explain the inclusion of "To the roaring Wind" in Harmonium, despite its modest intrinsic merits, and its placement as the last poem in both the 1923 and 1931 editions. It has a function in the book as a whole, as signifying the possibility that the poet will find his voice again.

To the roaring Wind

What syllable are you seeking,

Vocalissimus,

In the distances of sleep?

Speak it.

Conclusion

Let the poet himself have the last word. From a 1918 letter, he writes: "There's no symbolism in the "Earthy Anecdote". There's a good deal of theory about it, however; but explanations spoil things."

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