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...

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.

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. :)