Final Paper

Meghan O’Neal

Wallace Stevens as an Anti-Romantic

            Stevens, in Imagination as Value, states, "Then, too, before going on, we must somehow cleanse the imagination of the romantic... The imagination is the liberty of the mind. The romantic is a failure to make use of that liberty. It is to the imagination what sentimentality is to feeling." Stevens uses the imagination not to lie, but to reveal the truth. The romantic is a lie. The romantic allows us to lie to ourselves and live in a world that is not real. Imagination is not a lie, but a way to demonstrate the truth. However, if we allow the romantic into the imagination, if we allow ourselves to see the world through a romantic lens, we are not seeing the true world. Then, we are trying to live in a world that does not exist while the real world passes us by. How can we possibly truly live if life is a lie? In order to truly live and truly be happy, we cannot live a lie. Even if the truth is terrifying, and even if the truth is something that we do not want to hear, at least it is the truth, and at least we know what that truth is. Once we know that truth, we are able to move on and live in the real world, which is a beautiful world. But we cannot see this beautiful world if we are blinded by lies.

            Sentimentality mars feeling. Sentimentality creates something that is not real. Looking back, sentimentality can change feelings. Sentimentality breeds emotions that did not exist. It seems very real. It is easy to look back on a memory and create feelings that did not exist. I experience this feeling all the time. Take, for example, high school. Many times I look back and miss the simpler days when my mom cooked my food, homework was easy, and I didn’t have a care in the world. However, the reality of it is that high school was not that great. I was a sad, lonely teenager who just wanted to leave home and couldn’t wait to grow up. The reality is much different than the memory, but it is the sentimental memory that sometimes keeps me rooted in the past and keeps me longing for something that never existed instead of staying in the present and looking forward.

It is the same with the romantic and the imagination. The imagination can serve to illustrate reality, make reality beautiful. However, imagination with the romantic blinds reality. The romantic is not real. The romantic is what we want life to be, much like sentimentality is what we want feelings to be. The romantic does nothing to serve reality, and only serves as a crutch to those who cannot handle reality. The world of the romantic is a world of lies. 

Therefore, we must always be aware of reality when we use the imagination. In Anecdote of the Jar, it says:

“I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennesse.

Here, reality and imagination work together. The jar (reality) makes “the slovenly wilderness surround that hill” (imagination). The jar tames the wilderness as it grows around the jar because it is the presence of the jar that reminds us that the world is no longer wild and free, but tamed because of humanity. The jar serves as a reminder that , although the world is beautiful, there is still ugly, manmade things which, no matter how small, serve only to dominate nature instead of work alongside it: “It took dominion everywhere, the jar was grey and bare.” Although the imagination of the wilderness came all up and around it, and it itself was beautiful, the jar was still there and could not be ignored. So it is with the imagination and reality. Imagination can come up and around reality, it can work with reality, but it cannot be used to hide reality. It is when the jar is not covered, and when nature cannot overtake it that it becomes “like nothing else in Tennesse.” It may be ugly, and it might have been happier or more beautiful if the jar could just have been covered, but that is not reality, and reality has its own sort of unique beauty.

Imagination becomes dangerous when it is used to hide reality. Stevens, in Imagination as Value, states, "We live in the mind. One way of demonstrating what it means to live in the mind is to imagine a discussion of the world between two people born blind, able to describe their images, so far as they have images, without the use of images derived from other people." Later, he also says, "If we live in the mind, we live with the imagination." Imagination is something that we all have and we all have to live with. Imagination is all around us. Imagination is a part of us. We must be aware of this imagination and how to correctly use it. 

He also says, "What, then, is it to live in the mind with the imagination, yet not too near to the fountains of its rhetoric, so that one does not have a consciousness only of grandeurs, of incessant departures from the idiom, and of inherent altitudes? Only the reason stands between it and the reality for which the two are engaged in a struggle." Reason is the way we keep reality in the imagination. Reason is the way to stay away from the romantic and free the imagination.

Stevens illustrates this point in section II of The Rock, The Poem as Icon:

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.

We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground

Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.

And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,

If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings

Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

The fiction of the leaves is the icon

Of the poem, the figuration of blessedness,

And the icon is the man. The pearled chaplet of spring,

The magnum wreath of summer, time's autumn snood,

Its copy of the sun, these cover the rock.

These leaves are the poem, the icon and the man.

These are a cure of the ground and of ourselves.

In the predicate that there is nothing else.

They bud and bloom and bear their fruit without change.

They are more than leaves that cover the barren rock.

They bud the whitest eye, the pallidest sprout,

New senses in the engenderings of sense,

The desire to be at the end of distances,

The body quickened and the mind in root.

They bloom as a man loves, as he lives in love.

They bear their fruit so that the year is known,

As if its understanding was brown skin,

The honey in its pulp, the final found,

The plenty of the year and of the world.

In this plenty, the poem makes meanings of the rock,

Of such mixed motion and such imagery

That its barrenness becomes a thousand things

And so exists no more. This is the cure

Of leaves and of the ground and of ourselves.

His words are both the icon and the man.

            The cure of the ground is the imagination. Imagination is the moss that grows over top of the rock. The flowers that cover it and make it beautiful. The rock is still there. The rock will always be there, and we will always be aware of it. We must be aware of it. The rock is things the way they are. The rock is reality. The moss does not cover the rock in order to hide it, but it covers it in order to make it more beautiful. It enhances the rock, much like imagination enhances reality.

            Poetry is the imagination. Poetry is the leaves and the flowers that covers the rock. “In this plenty, the poem makes meanings of the rock,/Of such mixed motion and such imagery/That its barrenness becomes a thousand things/And so exists no more. This is the cure/Of leaves and of the ground and of ourselves./His words are both the icon and the man.” The imagination of poetry does not cover or hide the rock, but makes meaning of it. It uses the imagination of imagery and creates scenes and metaphors in order to illustrate reality, not cover it. Once the reality is shown using the imagination, the rock is not so cold and barren, but it becomes beautiful. Reality does not need to be hidden. Reality should not be hidden. Reality is not a cold, barren thing if looked at correctly. Once the imagination is used in this way, to beautify reality rather than hide it, once we see things the way they are rather than shying away from them, then we can truly live and be happy. It is then that we can move forward. It is then that we are free from the romanticization of the world. We can stop wishing for things that do not exist. Poetry, the imagination, is the cure. Poetry and the imagination free us from the confines of the romantic.

Stevens serves as a destructive character. He removes the romantic in order to reveal the truth beneath. Andrew Lakritz, in Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore says, "The destructive character is just that: a storyteller who passes on situations." Stevens illustrates things the way they are. He does not lie in order to make things look nice. He writes reality. He is merely passing on situations to the reader.

As a destructive character, Stevens strives to separate the romantic from the imagination, as well as stripping the imagination of outside influences. Lakritz states (about The Snow Man), “It is… about finding ways to think and feel about one’s own experience in the world, ways that have diminished in the modern period precisely because one can regard and behold “nothing that is not there” – not adding gratuitously to the scene – and the “nothing that is, the emptiness of the land itself.” Being human, there are certain assumptions made, certain precedents set. It is difficult to see things the way they are when so many things are shown to be different. Stevens strives to remove these precedents and assumptions. He strips away common concepts that are said to be reality in order to reveal the truth.

And so, what is the truth? Returning to The Rock, Stevens writes in section I:

“It is an illusion that we were ever alive,

Lived in the houses of mothers, arranged ourselves

By our own motions in a freedom of air.

Regard the freedom of seventy years ago.

It is no longer air. The houses still stand,

Though they are rigid in rigid emptiness.”

We are nothing more than dust, small particles passing through this earth. Soon, we will be nothing, not even a memory. We can never make an impact on this earth that is big enough to be remembered forever. It is an illusion that we were ever alive. We are such small blips on the radar that it is as if we never existed. The world moves on so quickly, 70 years flies by and yet that may be a lifetime. “The houses still stand, though they are rigid in rigid emptiness.” The houses of 70 years ago are still around, yet they are not what they used to be and never will be. Time moves on, leaving us behind. We are nothing. Our lives are nothing. No matter what we do, all things will eventually fade. As if we never existed.

So how is the truth beautiful? How can removing the romantic from this truth make things better? If we can be happy lying to ourselves in our romantic world where we do have meaning and death is not the end, isn’t that better than facing this dark reality?

Stevens says no. “Imagination, as metaphysics, leads us in one direction and, as art, in another. When we consider the imagination as metaphysics, we realize that it is in the nature of the imagination itself that we should be quick to accept it as the only clue to reality” (“Imagination as Value” 727). He uses an example of the dangers of the imagination as metaphysics from Professor Joad: “If . . . God is a metaphysical term, if, that is to say, He belongs to a reality which transcends the world of sense-experience . . . to say that He exists is neither true nor false. This position . . . is neither atheist nor agnostic; it cuts deeper than either, by asserting that all talk about God, whether pro or anti, is twaddle.” Imagination as metaphysics, imagination alongside the romantic is nothing more than supposings and musings. With no reality to base it on, it becomes null and void. How can one have a good, concrete thought when it is all based on the abstract? It is worthless. Twaddle.

Reality is not as grim as it may seem. In fact, once you recognize reality as it is and remove the romantic, it becomes downright sublime. You find the truth and you find meaning. In Stevens’ poem How To Live. What To Do. it says,

“Last evening the moon rose above this rock

Impure upon a world unpurged.

The man and his companion stopped

To rest before the heroic height.

Coldly the wind fell upon them

In many majesties of sound:

They that had left the flame-freaked sun

To seek a sun of fuller fire.

Instead there was this tufted rock

Massively rising high and bare

Beyond all trees, the ridges thrown

Like giant arms among the clouds.

There was neither voice nor crested image,

No chorister, nor priest. There was

Only the great height of the rock

And the two of them standing still to rest.

There was the cold wind and the sound

It made, away from the muck of the land

That they had left, heroic sound

Joyous and jubilant and sure.”

The man and his companion in this poem “left the flame-freaked sun to seek a sun of fuller fire.” They were searching for the romantic. They wanted a better, brighter sun, a sun which does not exist. It was a futile quest. However, they come upon this rock (reality), rising above the wilderness (imagination) and this catches their eye. This rock they find instead of the romantic sun they are looking for. And this rock, reaching up to touch the clouds, is far more beautiful than the false sun they sought. They had no pivotal moment with choruses, they had no religious understanding, no priest had to tell them what this was. They just saw reality as it was, and they knew what it was and how life was and it was beautiful. Then, they hear only the wind, but the sound of the wind, so simple and small, was “joyous and jubilant and sure.” They had gone out in search of the romantic, in search of something they knew that they wanted, but that was false. What they found instead was nothing more than the grey rock of reality, a simple thing, and yet this was more beautiful than anything they could have dreamed of. And in it, they not only find joy, but they are now sure.

This poem illustrates that this is the greatest thing reality can give: assuredness. Even if reality is not exactly what is expected or wanted, it is sure. Reality will always be reality. It is a rock; firm, steady, unfaltering. This is sublime. Knowing is sublime. Reality will never falter, and as long as you see reality as it is, without romanticizing it, you will experience the sublime existence.

Once the veil of romanticism is lifted, you can see the world the way it is. Romanticism hides the truth. Romanticism causes you to search for things that do not exist. Reality frees you from this. Reality allows you to understand things the way they are and only then can you move forward. Romanticism is nothing but chains, holding you to a false reality. Imagination without romance sets you free.

Stevens uses imagination to illustrate reality. The imagination of his poetry does not flourish or embellish reality, but shows reality as it really is. He strove only to show that reality, although harsh and ugly, is beautiful once it is understood. He lived the sublime, free from falsities and promises of things that would never be. Because he saw things the way they are instead of fighting it with the false possibility of things that could be, he remains grounded in reality and is therefore able to move forward and do the things that he needs to do in order to live this life. He is able to find true happiness in this world because he is not searching for things that don’t exist. He finds peace in this, even if reality is not all butterflies and hopscotch.

The true sublime is seeing things the way they are. The romantic only serves to blind.

Not Ideas About the Thing, But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,

In March, a scrawny cry from outside

Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,

A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,

In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,

No longer a battered panache above snow…

It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism

Of sleep’s faded papier-mache…

The sun was coming from outside

That scrawny cry – it was

A chorister whose c preceded the choir.

It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,

Still far away. It was like

A new knowledge of reality.

Solaris

Solaris
The blue ball reminded my of a "sun of fuller fire." It struck me that that was what the people were doing... Looking out for a sun of fuller fire.

As the research and are around Solaris, they are visited by these people from their past. But these people aren't the same as their real versions. And they know this. Because of this, the visions will never what the people want them to be. It is because they aren't real. They are the romantic versions of the people. The one in the people's heads. They are made from memories, nothing more. They are also a cause of depression because they know that the visitors aren't real. They know they are only in their heads and yet they keep on believing. They are unable to rid themselves of the romantic and it keeps a hold of them.

Solaris is the sun of fuller fire. It is the romanticized world, the world that can make things better, a world that creates the romantic. However, what it creates is not real.

The characters are unable to experience the sublime because they are unable to forget the past. They are unable to remove themselves from the romantic.

Wallace Stevens Wikipedia

Wallace Stevens, born in Reading, Pennsylvania on October 2, 1879, was a great American poet. Basing his philosophy on the teachings of Lucretius, Stevens strove to reveal reality through the imagination of poetry. He used poetry in order to remove the romantic from the imagination in order to show the reality beneath.

Stevens strove to use poetry in order to show his readers How to Live and What to Do. His poetry illustrated to his readers that reality is beautiful, more beautiful than the reality we may create for ourselves. He explored the concept of the imagination as a tool to express reality rather than hide it.

As a poet, Stevens works as a destructive character. He destroys our typical views of the world and replaces them with reality. He shows his readers that reality, although harsh, is all the more beautiful because it is what is real. Ultimately, he wishes his readers to see the world as it truly is and to stop creating a false reality. Because only then can a person experience what is truly sublime.

In Conclusion

It's funny because this entire semester there have been a lot of things about Stevens that I've been struggling with. Sometimes I think I almost get what he's saying, but most of the time he's way off in another dimension. I've been struggling with a lot of his points and I've tended to disagree with him in a lot of ways.

Until today.

I was working on my project and it just kind of clicked. Things the way they are. Devoid of the romantic. We, as humanity, tend to lie to ourselves in order to make ourselves feel better. We think about the white light, what happens when we die. We like to think that we're important and that each person as an individual makes a deep impact on this earth and everyone is important. But we're wrong. No one is important. We all eventually fade away and there will be nothing marking our existence. It will be like we were never here at all.

I always understood this. I had no difficulty understanding this mindset. But my question was, why is this bad? Why can't we lie to ourselves? If it makes us feel better, then why should we have to face reality? Why must we feel insignificant? I'm perfectly okay lying to myself.

But then, as I wrote my paper, I realized how dangerous this mindset is. It leaves us longing for things that do not exist and will never be. It leaves us striving for a nonexistent goal, not one that is too far beyond our reach, but one that is not even there at all. What kind of life is this? What kind of life is one lived for something that doesn't exist? I think I'd almost rather waste my life doing nothing than strive towards something that will never be. At least then I'd be fat, lazy and happy.

You can lie to yourself. You can pretend you're happy moving towards a nonexistent goal. But what good does that do you or the people around you? In order to move forward, you must know reality. You must be aware of things as they are. Only then can you move towards something productive. You'll know that the things you do don't and won't matter. You'll know that it may be futile. You'll know all this, but at least you'll know. At least your goals will have this in mind. And maybe, then, just maybe you might be able to work towards a greater progress. Maybe you might make a tiny knick in time, and maybe it won't fade away so soon.

But even if you are not able to do this, you will be better as an individual, and you won't waste your life. And that is what is important. You won't make a lasting difference, but you are still you and you are still important to yourself and those around you. So, knowing the truth, knowing reality, you can now be free to make a difference in the lives of those around you. It may not be remembered forever, it may not make a great change in the universe, but it will be remembered and appreciated now, and that's all you can do.

I guess, I just wanted to conclude this class by saying, I was skeptical, but it turns out that I did learn something from Wallace Stevens, and it was no small thing to learn. And for that I am grateful.

Insignificance

Feeling insignificant is something that obviously everyone has felt. It's funny, though, because we've been talking about insignificance in terms of the universe and how small we are and how we're just a blip in the vast expanse of infinite, but that's not where I find insignificance. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. The fact that I'm still here and living and breathing while there is so much more kind of gives me meaning and makes me feel important. There must be a reason for it all.

However, I find my insignificance in the little things. A forgotten toy. A lonely park bench. Falling leaves. I find it in the forgotten things and the unnoticed.

I see this in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. I thought about this today after I recited my poem and we watched that planets movie.

Vacancy in the Park

March... Someone has walked across the snow
Someone looking for he knows not what.

It is like a boat that has pulled away
From a shore at night and disappeared.

It is like a guitar left on a table
By a woman who has forgotten it.

It is like the feeling of a man
Come back to see a certain house.

The four winds blow through the rustic arbor,
Under its mattresses of vines.

It's poems like this that make me feel insignificant. The image of a boat disappearing. A forgotten guitar. A man searching for something he lost a long time ago.

The last stanza serves as a reminder that man is fleeting, but nature will remain forever. The line "mattresses of vines" makes me think of those post-apocalyptic movies where they show  cities taken over by trees and nature, where everything made by man is slowly decaying.

This poem reminds me that I am fleeting. It reminds me that it is so easy to be forgotten. It reminds me that loneliness is just around the corner. It reminds me that I am nothing but a small girl lost in the bustle of the world, and that I will soon be gone, forgotten.

This poem is about insignificance.

Umbrella Trees

Well, I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I have had absolutely no idea as to what to post about. So, today I just took a peek in the Adagia to see if anything caught my eye, and, lo and behold, it did...

"All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees = umbrellas."

I don't really know why this caught my eye - maybe because when I read this, I immediately thought of umbrella trees, which made me think of Dr. Seuss, and then I went on a long thought tangent about how awesome Dr. Seuss is - but that is far beside the point.

I'm not entirely sure if I even fully understand this quote, but it made me think a little about seeing things the way they are and where exactly inspiration, and how there is nothing that is truly original. This quote is so true, and it is lovely to think about. Of course all of our ideas come from nature. What else have we ever needed except nature? It is because of nature that we are able to survive. It is nature that was here before us, and it will be nature that will be here long after we are gone... We would be idiotic to think that we are so much better than nature that we can come up with better ideas than nature. We should be inspired by nature.

I also thought that it was interesting how, in this statement, Stevens is merely stating a truth (things the way they are). However, in stating this truth, he uses the imagination in order to illustrate reality. It was because of my imagination, and how I immediately pictured umbrella trees, that I was able to (kind of) understand what Stevens is saying. Yet again, he shows the relationship between the imagination and reality by explaining reality using the imagination.

Trying...

So, today I, again, attempted to take a stab at some Stevens poetry analysation to see where I got. Although I almost definitely barely even scratched the surface....

This as Including That

This rock and the dry birds
Fluttering in blue leaves,

This rock and the priest,
The priest of nothingness who intones -

It is true that you live on this rock
And in it. It is wholly you.

It is true that there are thoughts
That move in the air as large as air,

That are almost not our own, but thoughts
To which we are related,

In an association like yours
With the rock and mine with you.

The iron settee is cold.
A fly crawls on the balustrades.

I guess, to put a broad term upon this poem, I would say this is a poem about connectivity. I kind of feel like this is an almost obvious statement, though, because isn't that kind of what Stevens is all about? It's a very Lucretian idea. We are all just atoms, therefore we are all the same.

This can definitely be seen in the line "It is true that you live on this rock/ And in it. It is wholly you." I took the rock to mean the Earth. What is the Earth except a giant rock floating through space? We live on this rock, and we are a part of this rock. We are one and the same.

Lucretius says,
"Confess then, naught from nothing can become,
Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,
Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves
Into their primal bodies again, and naught
Perishes ever to annihilation."

He is saying that nothing comes from nothing. Everything comes from something. And we don't dissolve into nothing, either. Our bodies, our atoms, everything will merely change. We will become something else (even if we, as ourselves, may not be aware of this change). Therefore, we are of the Earth. The Earth is us. Our bodies, our matter, we are nothing new. We are only different. And when our souls are gone, our bodies will remain to continue with this Earth. Because of this, we are connected to everything, because everything is a part of us. We are the rock.

I thought the "camera movement" in this poem was interesting. As I read it, I pictured a close-up of birds fluttering in blue leaves. Then the "camera" moved back a bit to reveal the rock and the priest. It moved back even more to reveal thoughts in the air "as large as air," to thoughts "that are almost not our own," which I think is the largest, then closer in to "an association like yours with the rock and mine with you," and, finally, it ends with another close-up of the iron settee and the fly.

To me, this serves to further show our connectivity. We are connected to the birds, and the leaves, and the thoughts that flow through the air, not even ours, to the Earth, to the fly, to the settee. We are connected to everything, big and small, and that is beautiful.

And there one piece to this poem that I really connected with. I know that it is only a sliver of what I could discover, but that is the one piece that I found to be wonderful.

The Destructive Character

I have been reading "Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore" by Andrew M. Lakritz. In it, he discusses Wallace Stevens as a destructive character. He explains that Stevens works to tear down typical views of mankind and nature and work towards change in his poetry. "If Stevens meant to be a poet of change, he did so in order to make his position as a writer most deeply connected with the life of his nation and his community, and not connected in the sense of one speaking the common language of the realm and this communicating with his people but, rather, speaking as one who would shift the very grounds of thought and speech." (Lakritz 45).

Stevens was not a Romantic, which is what makes him Lucretian. He wrote about things the way that they are. Too often, many poets litter their poems with abstract metaphor which serve to only confuse rather than clarify. What is the point of this? Stevens only wished to point out the world the way it is. He served to remove the romanticism from humanity and present the world the way it is supposed to be. In Stevens' time, the world was at war. It was confusing, chaotic, and the future was unsure. Many conceptions of the world was changing. From this, Stevens emerged, trying to shine a light on reality, untangling what was real from the imagination. While boys filled with the fantasy of courage lined up to sign up for war, Stevens came out attempting to give a sense of reality to the world, removing the romance, and helping people to see things the way they are.

Lucretius also strives for people to see things the way that they are. By removing the concept of life after death and removing the idea that we are working towards something for some great being, it simplifies things. We are here. That is it, and that is all we need to worry about. I heard an interesting quote today. Although I can't remember the exact words, it went along the lines of, Things are more pleasurable when they are shortened. This immediately struck me as Lucretian. Life is sweeter because it is short. Life is sweeter when it has an end. He removes the romance of life after death and, therefore, makes life sweeter. It gives life more pleasure. It makes life a thing to be savored rather than a process towards a higher goal assigned to an abstract being.

Both Lucretius and Stevens tear things apart in order to bring to life a simpler, more sublime reality. They are destructive characters, but from the destruction, new life rises.

Things the Way They Are

It's funny how the more I learn about Wallace Stevens, the more I see him in my daily life, and the more I understand him.

Seeing things the way they are is an idea that I have not been able to get out of my head. It's funny to me that this comes up in poetry because it's always been the part about seeing things the way they aren't that's always stumped me and kept me from really understanding poetry. To me, poetry has always been about crazy metaphors and symbols and basically goes down the list of an 8th grade English class vocabulary list.

But then along comes Wallace who says to see things the way they are. A pear is a pear. A tree is a tree.

This idea has been following me around for a bit. I have the horrible habit of over thinking everything. A tree is never just a tree. A word is never just a word. Everything means something. Everything has an underlying purpose. But yesterday, I was driving with my roommate through the Bridgers, watching the sunset, clearing my mind. And then it hit me. It's so simple. A pear is just a pear. Things are what they are.

It's so simple! It's so sublime!

It's so Lucretian...

We're all the same. We're all just atoms. That's the way things are. There is no need to over think things because it doesn't matter. It's all dust and it will all blow away. This is the sublime. It's lonely to think that it doesn't matter, but it's also freeing in a way.

I was flipping through "the bible" today and I came across this poem:

A Window in the Slums

I think I hear beyond the walls
    The sound of late birds singing.
Ah! what a sadness those dim calls
    To city streets are bringing.

But who will from my window leans
    May hear, neath cloud belated,
Voices far sadder intervene,
    Sweet songs with longing weighted -

Gay children in their fancied towers
    Of London, singing light
Gainst heavier bars, more gay than in their flowers
    The birds of the upclosing night

And after stars their places fill
    And no bird greets the skies;
The voices of the children still
    Up to my window rise.

Thinking about this poem from the Things the Way They Are perspective, I see a sad sort of happiness. Although this poem takes place in the slums, which is considered a sad place, the children still sing. The voices are sad, but light. "Gay children in their fancied towers." The slums the way they are aren't always sad. It is a place of dreams, especially for the children, who still allow their imagination to roam. Things the way they are are not as bad as they seem. 

Adagia

"Happiness is an acquisition."

It's funny how this is the first one, because this is an idea that has shaped me as a person and has vastly improved my life. When I opened "the bible" and saw this, I had one of those great moments where my breath was taking away, and I just wanted to shout, "Yes!"

My definition of success is happiness. You must be happy in whatever you are doing, whatever it is. However, happiness doesn't just happen. It grows. You learn to be happy. You make the choice. I mean, of course you're not always going to be happy, and there will always be something that happens that will take your happiness away. However, it is fleeting. You will be happy again if you really want to be. And what is true happiness if you have never experienced pain? Looking at it from a Lucretius perspective, everything is dust. We are dust. Things that happen to us are dust. Emotions are dust. They will all blow away eventually. You must learn to be happy. You must find enough strength in your happiness to allow it to continue on even when the world seems determined to take it away. Happiness is an acquisition.

I have friends who are waiting for happiness to find them. They don't understand that they must acquire it themselves. Happiness doesn't just come. They don't understand why they are not happy. They sit in their rooms watching TV, complaining about their jobs, their lives. They think happiness will just come, and become frustrated and angry when it doesn't, which pushes them deeper into depression. Until they understand that they must go pursue this happiness, they will never acquire it.

I have other friends who live under this mindset of happiness acquisition. They have experienced sadness, experienced depression and became tired of it. They were tired of waiting. They knew what they needed to do in order to be happy, and they did it. And now nothing can take that happiness away. Of course, they are not perpetually happy now. They have their times, they slip back into depression, they become sad and angry and frustrated. However, now that they have acquired true happiness, they know that the bad times are fleeting, and the happiness will return. They know the steps they need to take to acquire happiness. They have the control and nothing can take that away. They have acquired happiness.

"A poem is a meteor."

This one caught my eye because I had to think about it for quite some time. How is a poem like a meteor? Once I realized, I thought that this was the most beautiful idea. When good poetry is first read, it is beautiful, at least to me. The words rush over me, and I get lost in the wonder of it, much like a meteor; when it comes to Earth, it begins as a shooting star, beautiful in the night sky. It takes your breath away as you watch it move across the night sky.

But then, I read the poem more. I try to find its meaning. I take it piece by piece, determining what exactly the author meant. And then it hits me, and the impact makes a mark that will never be erased. It is not gentle as it hits, more like an explosion. Like a meteor. The soft beauty of the shooting star hits the Earth, creating a crater (depending on the size of the meteor, of course). This, too, is a lot like poetry. Good poems may make a small indent, but great poems create a giant crater, changing the world forever. Maybe one day I might come across a poem big enough to turn my entire world upside down, changing everything I ever knew.

The World Defines The Word

With all of this discussion on poems about poetry and whatnot, I've kind of been wondering, what exactly is poetry really? What separates poetry from the rest of the written word? Is poetry more than merely words?

I have been reading Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore by Andrew M. Lakritz. In it, he discusses the evolution of language and the word. In the Bible, God calls Adam to name all the creatures of the world. This gives man a sort of domination over nature using the word; it gave him the power to define the things of the world. Language was a means to not only describe the world, but to define it, to tell it what it was. Man had that power because of language. However, this is not necessarily the case. "The great disease of modernity is to have suffered the recognition that an original relation to the languages of things, and to the things themselves, is no longer possible." Lakritz asserts that nature "speaks its own language" beyond our own.

This begs the question, at least for me, does language define the world, or does the world define our language?

I think that the world influences our language more than we think. It shapes the way our words are formed and shaped. It dictates how we describe our surroundings. The written word is made beautiful with a strong understanding of nature and how it works.

I believe that Stevens shared this belief, that nature influences the written word. Nature influences poetry. His poetry is a reaction to nature, rather than a description. He is not looking to define the world, but rather to write it.

This can be seen in The Man With the Blue Guitar. The fifth stanza really screamed this out.

"Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.

The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry

Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar."

The first line, "Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,/ Of the torches wisping in the underground" conveys this idea perfectly. Poetry, written under the assumption that language is used to define our world, rather than vice versa, seems to hold itself on this grand pedestal. Only the beauty of poetic words can truly convey the beauty of the world which surrounds us. However, it is nothing but torches "wisping," barely making enough light within this vast cavern. It cannot possibly even begin to unveil all that the world has to hold. However, they speak of things how they are. There are no shadows for them. They do not create the world using merely words. They let the world create their poetry. They speak of things how they are. The world and the words work together.

Poetry, to me, is nature. Poetry must understand nature in order to be. Poetry and nature must work together to create something beautiful. Otherwise it is nothing but a wisping torch in a black cavern, unaware of the vastness it has yet to shine its light on.

What We Hear and What We See

I have really enjoyed reading Lace's blog and hearing about her story. I thought that her point of view was really interesting. I know that I have always been enamored with the sound of words. It made me laugh when Sexon talked about babies making sounds for the joy of making sounds because my mom's favorite story to embarrass me with is about me loudly "reading" the Bible in church while the pastor tried to pray. Of course I couldn't actually read - I was only one - but I saw the words, knew there were supposed to be noises associated with them, and made my own. I did this in the car, in the store, everywhere I saw words. When I learned to read, I loved to read out loud, tasting each sound in my mouth. Even now, I'll stop and relish the deliciousness of a word. Lamppost. Cobblestone. Window pane. Mmmm Lovely!

This idea has always permeated my writing. Things I write must feel good to say out loud and to hear. I get lost in the syllables and consonants, weaving a story or scene. The most mundane thing can be made beautiful with the right mixture of letters. The sound of words is my passion, and that is what pushes my writing.

But then there are those, like Lace, on whom the sound and music of words is lost. This made me think. The wonderful thing about words is that they are more than just the sound. Words mean so much. There are so many levels to words. A single word can say so much. Or nothing at all. A word means something completely different to every person. Words are not black and white. Words are beautiful, and words can be evil. Words are dangerous, but they are also saving.

I think that it's important to see words from a different point of view. Not necessarily just the point of the words, but the words themselves. For so long, I have been driven by the sound and beauty of the words and how that speaks to me. But I really liked what lace said in her last post about being able to visualize the music, rather than hearing it. Visualizing the sounds.

For me, the sound of the words, and their musicality sort of dictate the images that come to my mind. First come the sounds, then the images. But how would I see things differently if I only focused on the images of the poem? Forgot about the words, but saw only the images they brought to my mind?

I looked at Vacancy in the Park again, thinking only about the images. I closed my eyes and pictured each line, bringing myself there. I was surprised to find that I had an entirely new perspective on the poem.

This time, I felt time gone by, and the loneliness left behind. It was not sad. It felt like the acceptance of change and things that will never be again.

"March... Someone has walked across the snow,
Someone looking for her knows not what.

It is like a boat that has pulled away
From a shore at night and disappeared."

Time goes on, and leaves us looking into the darkness, remembering a past long gone. We are always drawn to the past, but we cannot go back. We are always here, while time moves around us, leaving us behind with our memories if we aren't careful.

I hadn't realized the loneliness of this poem until I had taken the time to forget the words and focus only on what I saw. I'm very grateful for this new perspective I have found!

Noticing

Mandolin and Liquers

La-la! The cat is in the violets
And the awnings are let down.
The cat should not be where she is
And the awnings are too brown,
Emphatically so.

If awnings were celeste and gay,
Iris and orange, crimson and green,
Blue and vermilion, purple and white,
And not this tinsmith's galaxy,
Things would be different.

The sun is gold, the moon is silver.
There must be a planet that is copper
And in whose light the roses
Would have a most singular appearance,
Or nearly so.

I love to sit and read the Telegraph
That vast confect of telegrams,
And to find how much that really matters
Does not really matter
At all.

What is this about? When I first read this poem, it just reminded me of a wandering mind on a Sunday afternoon. I picture an old man sitting on his porch, watching the world happen. This is a poem about noticing. It kind of reminds me of the poem I was assigned to memorize, Vacancy in the Park. Here, too, is a poem about noticing. Merely noticing the simple footsteps in the spring snow.

Life is simple. Things are. The sun is gold. The moon is sliver. If it wasn't, it would be different. But that is exactly how things are. Nothing matters.

The more I read Stevens, the more Lucretius screams at me. "And to find how much that really matters/ Does not really matter/ At all." It doesn't matter. What will all this be years down the road? What will we be? We will be nothing. All we can do is notice.

This poem is beautiful and simple. I am a huge fan of noticing (ha ha). Too often, things as small as the intense brownness of the awnings goes unnoticed. The misplacement of a cat is overlooked. But if nothing matters, why do we focus so much on the big things, and forget the little things?

The sublime is noticing. The sublime is taking the time to realize the color of the sun and moon, and the colors that they are not. The sublime is wondering what the world would be like if this were not so. The sublime is taking the time to see every day things, to not rush, to watch the happenings of a cat.

This poem is about noticing. This poem is about simplicity. This poem is about the sublime. 

The Simple Things

Okay, so...
I absolutely love the poem that I was assigned to memorize ("Vacancy in the Park"). The opening lines immediately grabbed me:

"March... Someone has walked across the snow,
Someone looking for he knows not what."

I love the little things the world has to offer. Walking down the street, I am usually looking down, not because I'm ignoring the world around me, but because I am trying to absorb the miniscule things that usually go unnoticed. I fall in love with the cracks in the sidewalk, a trampled cigarette butt, the corner where the sidewalk meets a building, creases on a page in a book, graffiti in a bathroom stall. Each of these has a story, and I love to imagine the stories behind them.

This is what this poem says to me. I picture old tracks in Spring snow, melted slightly so that they are deformed, but still traveling to an unknown destination. These footsteps are memories of something that has gone by. It really does not matter what it is, just that it happened.

To me, this is sublime. We leave our memories unintentionally. We know nothing of the person who left these footprints except that they were here and now they are not. The world serves as our record-keeper and we each leave a mark. These footprints will fade, but they are here now, and that's what matters.

I have had a hard time connecting Lucretius with the sublime. I can understand his reasoning, how we can feel sublime knowing that this is the only time we have and we must cherish it. We can only truly enjoy something if we know it will be gone someday. However, I had a hard time feeling sublime with this mindset. If all we face is an eternity of nothing, what's the point? Why are we even here? This seems to be the opposite of sublime to me.

However, reading this poem, I understand. Our time on this Earth is beautiful. We each leave our footprints, our memories, our mark on this world. We may be gone, but we leave something behind. Eventually we will be forgotten and it will seem as though our lives do not matter, but really it's all just cracks in the sidewalk, graffiti in a bathroom stall, footprints in March snow... Our lives are the things that go unnoticed, the imperfections, but we are still here. We still matter. This is sublime: true understanding. The simple things.

I don't know, maybe I'm way off. But these two lines really spoke to me. These are the lines that will fester in my mind and stay with me for a while.

Back Story

Death does not take my memory. I remember that day. The chaos. The fire. It has been so long. People come to clean our remains. They are only children, or have we been gone for that long? They do not know what happened here. They do not know how we were once full of life. We ran and we lived and we were full of life.

Oh how we loved life. I remember the smell of the grapes in Autumn, sharp with the crisp fall breeze.

The children are only left to guess at who we were. What we left. At least they can guess at how we saw, how we felt.

I remember the clouds in Spring, flowing behind our mansion, our garden, our home. The breeze rushed through our gate, joining the clouds in their dance.

The children will live here, will live our lives. They will see what we saw, live what we lived, and they will never know. Only our memories remain, haunting the land like a spirit.

But it is all just a house. Only a house, nothing more. It was beautiful to us in live, but it is nothing in death.

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.


Of all the poems we were told to read over the weekend, this stuck with me the most. Firstly, I was struck by the tone of the poem. It's kind of no-nonsense, this is how it is, you are wrong. It's not necessarily bitter or malicious, but it is very firm. There is a lot of passion behind his words. For him, this is it. This poem is incredibly Lucretius. "Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven." He calls her belief not only fiction, but childish. Although he says later that they "agree in principle" she is finding meaning in childish things which do not exist, and, therefore, she is only kidding herself. Her life is empty. 

I think it's interesting when he says, "Proud of such novelties of the sublime." This, I think, is the most powerful line in the poem, or, at least, it is the line that struck a chord in my mind. "Novelties" and "sublime" are two words that should never be seen in conjunction with each other, and yet here it is. It shows how she has given her whole self to this belief and found joy and a sense of sublimeness that is false. So false as to be called a novelty. It is interesting that he acknowledges her false understanding of the sublime and, although, again, they share the same principles, she is only kidding herself. Her life is fiction, and it's sad. He follows this line with complete gibberish, reflecting the gibberish she spouts daily. 

Mostly, this poem caught my eye because of "novelties of the sublime." I thought this was a sadly beautiful line which brings many images in my mind. Immediately I thought of the blissful ignorance of a child, who has absolutely no idea of what the world truly holds.  

Borrowed Book

The book I borrowed is "Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore" by Andrew M. Lakritz

I Am The Walrus

 So, to be perfectly honest, when I first cracked open "The Bible" and set my eyes upon Earthly Anecdote, I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed. As I continued reading the poems of Wallace Stevens, my overwhelmed feelings grew and grew until I began to wonder if I was crazy to even think I had what it took to be in this class. However, yesterday, when we discussed the sound of words and looked at Violet's story, I took a completely different approach to Stevens' poetry. I couldn't help but think of "I Am the Walrus" by The Beatles (technically written by John Lennon). The song makes no sense whatsoever using sounds such as "goo goo g'joob" and entirely made-up words (crabalocker). For some reason, though, I have never had any issue understanding this song. It is almost abstract in its meaning; in fact, it seems as though the whole point is that it has no meaning. The meaning I have always gotten from it has come in the form of feelings and images I have conjured while listening to the song. The combination of the music and the sounds of the words create this world in my mind that cannot be entirely explained, but I have always found this deep, strange connection to this song. I feel as though I have fallen into the mind of Lennon as I listen and together we go on this journey through his imagination.

I have been trying to keep this in mind as I read the poems of Wallace Stevens. Instead of trying to find the metaphor in his work and decipher an actual physical meaning, I read it with only the abstract in mind. What feelings does this string of words bring to the surface? What does my inner eye see? What pictures does he paint with his words? Instead of trying to figure out what he means, I try instead to hear how he wanted to be read. How was he intending his poem to sound? His words are music, and I intend to read them as such. I have found a much great appreciation and understanding of Stevens reading his work as such.

I Am the Walrus

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.
I'm crying.

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody tuesday.
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

Mister city policeman sitting
Pretty little policemen in a row.
See how they fly like Lucy in the Sky, see how they run.
I'm crying, I'm crying.
I'm crying, I'm crying.

Yellow mother custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye.
Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess,
Boy, you been a naughty girl you let your knickers down.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

Sitting in an english garden waiting for the sun.
If the sun don't come, you get a tan
From standing in the english rain.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob.

Expert textpert choking smokers,
Don't you think the joker laughs at you?
See how they smile like pigs in a sty,
See how they snied.
I'm crying.

Semolina pilchard, climbing up the eiffel tower.
Elementary penguin singing Hari Krishna.
Man, you should have seen them kicking edgar allan poe.
I am the eggman, They are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob.
Goo goo g'joob goo