A Postcard From The Volcano

No one could prepare for the tranquil serenity that would arrive after the destruction of their beloved town. The young children didn't know any better. And the adults in the autumn of their lives could only very faintly smell the sweetness because they knew they had not yet reached the winter of their souls. All anyone would remember of the land after this day would be the calm after the storm. The mansion house on the hill was boarded up because the debris had destroyed it beyond the conventions of natural beauty. But the children will remember it this way; in their young, innocent eyes, the old, broken mansion still contains its off-kilter beauty when it's reflected in the sun and the young children will carry the stories of this town before it's imminent demise.

"A Postcard From The Volcano"

Children picking up our bones
We will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill:

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost:

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw, The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion house
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what is... Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
We will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

The sound of words

On Wednesday, we talked about a play called Under the Milkwood that doesn't seem to make sense to those who experience it. It was written for the enjoyment of words, rather than for a plot, I guess. And this got me thinking of an NPR interview I listened to this summer with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. He talked about how when he his love for the sound of language began when he was a child; he used to go to the theatre with his parents and see plays that he was far too young to understand, but enjoyed every last one because he loved the flow of the written word as it was being performed.

This makes me think that could be a reason why an audience would love to see Under the Milkwood performed on stage, or even an audience who doesn't know a lick of French listening and enjoying the French language being spoken. Wallace Stevens is a master of taking "words" and transcending them into "art." I still don't really understand what "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is about, but I can tell you with certainty that I could listen to it being recited again, and again, and again...

A Child Asleep in Its Own Life

Among the old men that you know,
There is one, unnamed, that broods
On the rest, in heavy thought

They are nothing, except in the universe
Of that single mind. He regards them 
Outwardly and knows them inwardly,

The sole emperor of what they are,
Distant, yet close enough to wake
The chords above your bed to-night

When I think of Wallace Stevens, the first thing that always comes to mind is the poem "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock." And when I was reading through the poetry in Harmonium, this poem in particular stuck out to be because I feel like he enjoys playing with the trope of the restful old man, as well as the insight that is associated with dreaming. Ever since Lit. 110, one of my favorite images in poetry has been the drunken old sailor, asleep in his boots, catching tigers in red weather.

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace,
and beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots
Catches Tigers
In red weather.

I agree that Wallace Stevens' poems are quite like Dr. Seuss, but I would say it's Dr. Seuss for a more sophisticated palate. :)