Nomad Exquisite
Encyclopedia
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: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Stevens/Nomad_Exquisite.html
Here are some comments and questions as a way to begin thinking about the poem:
This 14-line, three-stanza poem does not follow a regular rhyme scheme or have a definitive meter, but it still relies heavily on repeating sounds--the alliterative Fs and Gs stand out particularly. The speaker hides until the last stanza, appearing as the "me" out of which "forms" are being flung; but does the speaker assimilate the reader, as it is in fact the reader who is "beholding" the poem, reading it into being in the present moment? Who is the "beholder," anyway? A third person? The eyes of the speaker? The eyes of "me," the reader? Who is the subject of the poem, and what is its object? This might be a poem about multiple subjects and multiple objects--a project of embodying multiplicities or pluralities. And if so, is "Florida"--replete with alligators and lush foliage--a red herring of sorts, a false target? This poem does not transport a place to us--or us to a place--as much as evacuate the place of its geographical space and turn it instead into a screen on which one can picture colors and images, or an audio speaker out of which one can hear sounds, or a postcard presenting a moment--a mere transfer of words, sounds, images, and feeling. This poem is best read as a montage of hints or innuendoes. There is nothing to be fleshed out beyond the surface content of the words, which is to say, the form of the poem: 14 short lines, some nonsensical, others clear only to end in obscurity or abstraction. This poem seduces us into its absurdity, but in so doing it relies on accessible--if ultimately arbitrary--points of entry (Florida’s ecology and religious language, most obviously). The poem repeats in order to emphasize, but what is finally emphasized is an ambience of repetition.
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",...
originally published in Harmonium in 1923.
Here is a link to a site where you can read the poem: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Stevens/Nomad_Exquisite.html
Here are some comments and questions as a way to begin thinking about the poem:
This 14-line, three-stanza poem does not follow a regular rhyme scheme or have a definitive meter, but it still relies heavily on repeating sounds--the alliterative Fs and Gs stand out particularly. The speaker hides until the last stanza, appearing as the "me" out of which "forms" are being flung; but does the speaker assimilate the reader, as it is in fact the reader who is "beholding" the poem, reading it into being in the present moment? Who is the "beholder," anyway? A third person? The eyes of the speaker? The eyes of "me," the reader? Who is the subject of the poem, and what is its object? This might be a poem about multiple subjects and multiple objects--a project of embodying multiplicities or pluralities. And if so, is "Florida"--replete with alligators and lush foliage--a red herring of sorts, a false target? This poem does not transport a place to us--or us to a place--as much as evacuate the place of its geographical space and turn it instead into a screen on which one can picture colors and images, or an audio speaker out of which one can hear sounds, or a postcard presenting a moment--a mere transfer of words, sounds, images, and feeling. This poem is best read as a montage of hints or innuendoes. There is nothing to be fleshed out beyond the surface content of the words, which is to say, the form of the poem: 14 short lines, some nonsensical, others clear only to end in obscurity or abstraction. This poem seduces us into its absurdity, but in so doing it relies on accessible--if ultimately arbitrary--points of entry (Florida’s ecology and religious language, most obviously). The poem repeats in order to emphasize, but what is finally emphasized is an ambience of repetition.