Last week, we were asked in class to choose a canto in a work by Wallace Stevens and talk about how it engages us, as readers. I must admit, I am always overcome with a strong "anxiety of influence" when it comes to classes where we consistently read each others' work (though it has been a privilege to be in a class with so many interesting, intelligent, individuals. I have been particularly impressed with Breanna's and Dustin's blogs, though everyone appears to have loads of insight to share with the class.
Mr. Burnshaw and the Statue, Canto I (pg 570)
The thing is dead... Everything is dead.
Except the future. Always everything
That is dead except what ought to be.
All things destroy themselves or are destroyed.
They are not even Russian animals.
They are horses as they were in the sculptor's mind.
They might be sugar or paste or citron-skin
Made by a cook that never rode the back
Of his angel through the skies. They might be mud
Left here by moonlit muckers when they fled
At the burst of day, crepuscular images
Made to remember a life they never lived
In the witching wilderness, night's witchingness,
Made to affect a dream they never had,
Like a word in the mind that sticks at artichoke
And remains immaculate, horses with cream.
The statue seems a thing from Schwarz's, a thing
Of the dank imagination, much below
Our crusted outlines hot and huge with fact,
Ugly as an idea, not beautiful
as sequels without thought. In the rudest red
Of autumn, these horses should go clattering
Along the thin horizons, nobly more
Than this jotting down of the sculptor's foppishness
Long after the worms and the curious carvings of
Their snouts.
I'm not sure what I am supposed to make of this poem, but I do think it has snippets of language that are worth analyzing, including what it means to be "ugly as an idea, not beautiful as sequels without thought." I would suppose the ugliness would come from using a work of art to expose an underlying truth that the reader/viewer does not want to grapple with. I think Stevens is a master of this, of observation (like all good artists are). Also, I noticed the imagery of the color red and autumn in this poem as well as in the poem I listed in my last blog entry. I feel like it would be worth exploring the "Stevensian" (did I spell this correctly?) nature of the season and color...
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Farewell Without a Guitar
Farewell Without a Guitar
by Wallace Stevens (pg 461)
Spring's bright paradise has come to this.
Now the thousand-leaved green falls to the ground.
Farewell, my days
The thousand-leaved red
Comes to this thunder of light
At it's autumnal terminal -
Head down. The reflections and repetitions,
The blows and buffets of fresh senses
Of the rider that was,
Are a final construction,
Like glass and sun, of male reality
And of that other and her desire.
I spent some time thumbing through the pages of my little, black Wallace Stevens book and came across one of his later works entitled , "Farewell Without a Guitar." It may have been the imagery of the guitar in the title that caught my eye at first (thought I could make some sort of connection to "The Man With the Blue Guitar?), but after reading it a few times, it made me realize that the guitar in the title could be a stand-in for something else he truly loved (a woman, perhaps).
The imagery in the poem immediately made me think of the Marc Webb film (500) Days of Summer. If Spring represents the beginning of life, then one could assume summer represents a period in life and love when everything is at its brightest, most vibrant, and most exciting. The object of the main character's affection in the film also happens to be named "Summer." But every season only lasts for a limited number of days, the same way the days of all of our affairs appear to be numbered... Spring's bright paradise must always turn into the thousand-leaved red, and our perspectives turn colder - and, unsurprisingly, the name of the woman he meets at the very end of the film (someone who could possibly be a new love interest) is named Autumn.
For anyone who has seen the film, we know "Head down. The reflections and repetitions, The blows and buffets of fresh senses" could refer to the way in which the protagonist is chronicling the days he was in love with Summer out of sequence. I think Stevens is lamenting the loss of a vibrant love in his life, the other being the woman herself and her desire being something that was fleeting was his grasp at the end of this affair.
by Wallace Stevens (pg 461)
Spring's bright paradise has come to this.
Now the thousand-leaved green falls to the ground.
Farewell, my days
The thousand-leaved red
Comes to this thunder of light
At it's autumnal terminal -
Head down. The reflections and repetitions,
The blows and buffets of fresh senses
Of the rider that was,
Are a final construction,
Like glass and sun, of male reality
And of that other and her desire.
I spent some time thumbing through the pages of my little, black Wallace Stevens book and came across one of his later works entitled , "Farewell Without a Guitar." It may have been the imagery of the guitar in the title that caught my eye at first (thought I could make some sort of connection to "The Man With the Blue Guitar?), but after reading it a few times, it made me realize that the guitar in the title could be a stand-in for something else he truly loved (a woman, perhaps).
The imagery in the poem immediately made me think of the Marc Webb film (500) Days of Summer. If Spring represents the beginning of life, then one could assume summer represents a period in life and love when everything is at its brightest, most vibrant, and most exciting. The object of the main character's affection in the film also happens to be named "Summer." But every season only lasts for a limited number of days, the same way the days of all of our affairs appear to be numbered... Spring's bright paradise must always turn into the thousand-leaved red, and our perspectives turn colder - and, unsurprisingly, the name of the woman he meets at the very end of the film (someone who could possibly be a new love interest) is named Autumn.
For anyone who has seen the film, we know "Head down. The reflections and repetitions, The blows and buffets of fresh senses" could refer to the way in which the protagonist is chronicling the days he was in love with Summer out of sequence. I think Stevens is lamenting the loss of a vibrant love in his life, the other being the woman herself and her desire being something that was fleeting was his grasp at the end of this affair.
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