Ugly as an idea

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...