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.