"Stars at Tallapoosa" is a poem

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...

 from 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",...

'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...

. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain.

Stars at Tallapoosa  The lines are straight and swift between the stars.  The night is not the cradle that they cry,  The criers, undulating the deep-oceaned phrase.  The lines are much too dark and much too sharp.  The mind herein attains simplicity.  There is no moon, on single, silvered leaf.  The body is no body to be seen  But is an eye that studies its black lid.  Let these be your delight, secretive hunter,  Wading the sea-lines, moist and ever-mingling,  Mounting the earth-lines, long and lax, lethargic.  These lines are swift and fall without diverging.  The melon-flower nor dew nor web of either  Is like to these. But in yourself is like:  A sheaf of brilliant arrows flying straight,  Flying and falling straightway for their pleasure,  Their pleasure that is all bright-edged and cold;  Or, if not arrows, then the nimblest motions,  Making recoveries of young nakedness  And the lost vehemence the midnights hold.

It can be read as one of Stevens's poems about the transfiguring power of poetic imagination, which in this case need not accept the night of the dolorous criers, but instead find in it qualities, like a sheaf of brilliant arrows or the nimblest motions, that make it the delight of the secretive hunter.

Buttel finds this poem noteworthy for its connections to 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...

. Like Whitman, Stevens prized the lyical qualities of American place names and animal names, and the title of this poem is one of Buttel's examples. He reads "Stars at Tallapoosa" as partly a refutation of Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" yet at the same time a variation on the mood and theme of that poem, even displaying some of Whitman's tone and manner, as in the lines about wading the sea-lines and mounting the earth-lines. Less brooding than Whitman's poem, "Stars at Tallapoosa" calls for an "active, imaginative transcendence over the blackness: in the mind's eye of his secretive hunter the intangible lines between the stars should become 'brilliant arrows' which will redeem his isolation."

Eleanor Cook recommends comparing the argument of this poem with Stevens's "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....

".