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.