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Overview
Wallace Stevens is one of the major poets of the twentieth century, and also among the most challenging. His poems can be dazzling in their verbal brilliance. They are often shot through with lavish imagery and wit, informed by a lawyer's logic, and disarmingly unexpected: a singing jackrabbit, the seductive Nanzia Nunzio. They also spoke--and still speak--to contemporary concerns. Though his work is popular and his readership continues to grow, many readers encountering it are baffled by such rich and strange poetry.
Eleanor Cook, a leading critic of poetry and expert on Stevens, gives us here the essential reader's guide to this important American poet. Cook goes through each of Stevens's poems in his six major collections as well as his later lyrics, in chronological order. For each poem she provides an introductory head note and a series of annotations on difficult phrases and references, illuminating for us just why and how Stevens was a master at his art. Her annotations, which include both previously unpublished scholarship and interpretive remarks, will benefit beginners and specialists alike. Cook also provides a brief biography of Stevens, and offers a detailed appendix on how to read modern poetry.
A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens is an indispensable resource and the perfect companion to The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, first published in 1954 in honor of Stevens's seventy-fifth birthday, as well as to the 1997 collection Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400827640 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/09/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Sales rank: | 776,504 |
| File size: | 624 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A READER'S GUIDE TO Wallace Stevens
By Eleanor Cook
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2007 Princeton University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-04983-0
Chapter One
Harmonium
Harmonium was published by Alfred A. Knopf in September 1923, with a second, slightly enlarged edition in 1931. The 1923 edition is dedicated "To my wife," and the 1931 edition "To my wife and Holly." Later collections bear no dedications. The 1923 collection gathers together sixty-eight poems published from 1915 to 1922 (C49-C79 in Morse, Bryer, and Riddel). Three poems from 1923 were cut in the second edition, "The Silver Plough-Boy" (OP 17, LOA 42), "Exposition of the Contents of a Cab" (OP 41, LOA 52), and "Architecture" (OP 37-39, LOA 66-67). The Collected Poems (1954) reprints the 1931 edition, where the 1923 poems end with "Nomad Exquisite" (CP 95), followed by fourteen additional poems, then by "Tea" and "To the Roaring Wind," which end both editions.
Stevens's subsequent collections generally publish most poems in approximate chronological order, but this one does not. A 1915 poem, "Tea," is the penultimate poem in both editions, while the latest poem chronologically, "Floral Decorations for Bananas," appears about halfway through. The order of the opening poems is skilfully designed. The overall order conceals Stevens's growing sense of frustration and malaise, most evident in the long poem, "The Comedian as the Letter C," which was rewritten and much expanded in the summer of 1922 (L 229), but appears about a third of the way through Harmonium. (See also the note to "The Snow Man.")
The harmonium is a musical instrument invented about 1840, "a keyboard instrument, the tones of which are produced by free metal 'reeds', tongues or vibrators', actuated by a current of air from bellows, usually worked by treadles; a kind of reed-organ" (OED; for more information, see EB, "harmonium"). It is a good word for poetry, given the longstanding tropes of pastoral reeds, the reeds of Pan et cetera, for poetry, as well as the organ-tropes of Milton, Dickinson, and others. The word is derived from Greek and Latin harmonia, so that it also suggests questions of harmony, including the older idea of the harmony of the universe, as it moves in accordance with the unheard heavenly music of the spheres. Note especially the next sentence in the OED: "Strictly distinguished from the American organ by the fact that the air is driven outwards through the reed-pipes, whereas in the latter it is sucked inwards; but the name is sometimes extended to include the American organ." This means that the word is also a happy trope for American poetry in 1923, because it distinguishes it in kind from British poetry. The troping of musical instruments runs throughout Stevens's work, on which see Hollander in Buttel and Doggett. (On his wife's piano and her accomplished playing, see the biography.) Stevens's first title was "The Grand Poem: Preliminary Minutiae" (L 237-38, 1923), which Knopf wisely discouraged; he wanted to subtitle his Collected Poems "The Whole of Harmonium" (L 831), but it did not happen.
* * *
Earthy Anecdote
Modern School 5 (July 1918), also in Others 5 (July 1919) with "Life Is Motion," another Oklahoma poem; CP 3, LOA 3.
To open, a poem with a distinctive Stevens flavor, and a distinctive American voice and place. Generally, this is a poem about two different kinds of energy encountering each other, often read as a fable about nature and art. Specifically, it is a fable or, more precisely, an anecdote that lends itself to different plots, as does "Plot against the Giant," three poems later. Stevens said there was no symbolism in the poem, but added that there was "a good deal of theory about it" (L 204, 1918). On possible "theory," see notes on the title and on "Oklahoma" below. Stevens's sinuous free verse works with skilful repetition and enjambment; the bucks' "swift, circular line[s]" also describe themselves as poetic lines.
TITLE: "Earthy": of the earth, rather than gross; see Stevens's important remarks on "the great poem of the earth" (NA 142, LOA 730, 1948). Harmonium opens with the word "earthy," and both editions close with "To the Roaring Wind," an invocation to the element of air. Traditional invocations come at the beginning, and call on the Muse for inspiration. Stevens has changed the order. Though the opening six poems in Harmonium do not invoke the Muse, they all focus on muse or genius loci figures that are both earthy and American.
"Anecdote": beyond the common meaning, "a secret or private, hitherto-unpublished narrative"; Stevens worked with this minor genre in 1918-20. (See titles CP 51, 55, 57, 76; OP 31, 43; LOA 41, 44, 46, 60, 539, 550. See also "anecdotal" CP 13, LOA 11, and "anecdote," CP 45, LOA 36, 37.) The Concordance shows no other uses of the word beyond these dates.
"bucks": Stevens objected to an illustration of his poem that resembled "original chaos," whereas he had in mind "something quite concrete: actual animals" (L 209, 1918).
"clattering": not usually a sound made by bucks, who more often graze or gallop.
"Over Oklahoma": an oddly skewed preposition that distances this poem from realistic narrative, moving its "actual animals" toward tale or fable, generically anecdote. The word "Oklahoma" functions in this generic context, while also recalling history. (On Oklahoma's turbulent history, especially in Stevens's lifetime, see, e.g., Dictionary of American History, ed. Cutler.) As an Indian name, said to mean "red men" or "land of red men," Oklahoma also evokes the tragic Indian history of this area. As an old name and a new state (1907), Oklahoma embodies the paradox of old and new in one (cf. "Oklahoman" in OE xvi). Rhetorically, "Oklahoma" echoes the k--cla of "bucks clattering" in a sound scheme, one of many schemes on place-names in Stevens.
"firecat": though an actual animal (L 209), mysterious and still resisting simple identification. (Minor Indian legends tell of a cougar or mountain lion who brings either helpful or destructive fire. Recent retellings use the word "firecat," but the relevant Smithsonian historical volumes on the American Indian do not record the word.) Cf. the force of poetry or of the spirit as a lion or cat in MBG XIX, "Poetry Is a Destructive Force," OE XI, etc.
Invective against Swans
Contact 2 (Jan. 1921), with "Infanta Marina"; CP 4, LOA 3-4.
Oddly, no swan appears in this invective against swans. Or not so oddly, for the poem's silent premise is "All your swans are geese." As elsewhere (CP 142-45, 342-43, 397; LOA 115-17, 299-300, 343), swans are associated with stale or dead conventions. No fertile earth exists in these Old-World-style parks. In contrast to "Earthy Anecdote," this poem uses couplets in regular iambic pentameter, some rhyme, imitative older syntax (e.g., "which that time endures"), i.e., it is an old-style poem.
TITLE: again the title identifies the genre, again a minor genre.
"A bronze rain from the sun": an aged, autumnal version of Zeus visiting Danaë in an impregnating shower of gold. The old gods now lack potency.
"Paphian": the swan, like the dove, is the bird of Venus.
"chilly chariots": Venus has a chariot drawn by swans; "chilly" wittily revises such standard tropes as "snowy chariot."
In the Carolinas
Soil 1 (Jan. 1917), as part of "In the South," Pt. II of "Primordia"; CP 4-5, LOA 4.
While the Carolinas may be a fertile part of the earth, the "Timeless Mother" here (Mother Nature?) is not always welcoming. As with the opening poem, this is a small poem that implies a good deal. A quatrain, then a tercet, then a couplet, all unrhymed, are cast as a short dialogue.
"aspic nipples / ... vent": not the usual food (breast-milk), but playing between a nourishing meat-jelly and a sense of death; cf. the deadly asp or aspic that Cleopatra laid on her breasts (Antony and Cleopatra V.ii.233ff.). The snaky verb "vent" is in charge. In contrast to a nourishing alma mater, Stevens suggests an aspera, or bitter, mother. (Cf. "Esthétique du Mal": "Life is a bitter aspic.") The breasts of this "Timeless Mother" do not always suggest a land of milk and honey.
"The pine-tree ...": the cryptic reply, presumably by the Timeless Mother, answers only the first sense of "How is it," i.e., "By what means." Or does it? Stevens leaves open the possibility that the reply is also a refusal to answer the second sense of the question, "Why?"
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
Poetry 15 (Oct. 1919), one of fourteen poems under the title "Pecksniffiana"; CP 5-6, LOA 4-5. The thirteen others are: "Fabliau of Florida," "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile," "The Weeping Burgher," "Peter Parasol" (not in Harmonium, see OP 40-41, LOA 548), "Exposition of the Contents of a Cab" (only in 1923 Harmonium, see OP 41, LOA 52), "Ploughing on Sunday," "Banal Sojourn," "The Indigo Glass in the Grass" (not in Harmonium, see OP 42-43, LOA 549), "Anecdote of the Jar," "Of the Surface of Things," "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician," "The Place of the Solitaires," and "Colloquy with a Polish Aunt." Pecksniff, from Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, is a type for a hypocrite and bully. The suffix implies that this group of poems belongs to an age of Pecksniff or concern him, as in "Victoriana." (See OED, Webster, "-ana," also "Pecksniff.") "Pecksniffiana" suggests that we ask what hypocritical stance each poem is set against. The answer is sometimes easy, sometimes not. The meaning of "Pecksniffiana" as "sayings of Pecksniff" (as in "Virgiliana") does not appear to be in play, yet it is not fully absent either; Stevens refuses to exempt himself from any taint of Pecksniffery.
The poem offers a current American Venus, very much of the earth, if not yet of the stature of her European forerunner. The title and the pun on "on" in line 1 set the tone. A virtuoso display of skill marks the diction.
TITLE: lines 1 and 2 modify and clarify the title; "paltry" is a humorous variation on a modesty topos, so as not to claim too much.
"But not on a shell, she starts": evoking a memory of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," and thereby identifying this "she" as a twentieth-century Venus. Though now the "paltry nude," she will reappear as "the goldener nude" in American guise, presumably in Stevens's poetry. Another early use of the Venus figure, here as subject-cum-muse, retrieved from archaic use and revised. (On titles run into first lines, especially in Marianne Moore, see Anne Ferry, The Title to the Poem [1996], 266.)
"purple": traditionally, the color of royalty.
"scrurry" (CP 6): misprint for "scurry," correct in LOA 5.
"scullion of fate": scouring the waves, so to speak (Dryden, "ships, that scour the watery plain," Georgics II.625; Geoffrey Hill, "and now the sea-scoured temptress," "Re-birth of Venus").
The Plot against the Giant
Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, ed. Alfred Kreymborg (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917), with eleven other poems, ten of which were published in Harmonium (see head-notes, below). The omitted poem is "Gray Room" (OP 28-29, LOA 537-38); CP 6-7, LOA 5-6.
The title and three girls suggest a fairy tale. The three girls, like three graces, set about civilizing the giant, "this yokel," in a delicately erotic poem. Echoes of Whitman make clear that the civilizing plot of the three charmers is not as simple as they suppose. "Giant" was one nickname for Stevens, bestowed because of his size (Richardson I.335 and see the signature to a letter to his fiancée, "Your Giant," L 160, 1909). He also enjoyed the mock-role of a bumbler (e.g., Peter Quince). Contraries of labials and gutturals are at work in the diction, and both perform poetic roles, despite the Third Girl's assumptions.
"Arching ... puffing. / He will bend": echoing Whitman, "They do not know who puffs and declines with pendent and bending arch" (Song of Myself 11).
"Oh, la ... le pauvre!": "Oh, oh ... the poor thing"; "la" is archaic or dialect Eng. adding emphasis, and evoking Fr. là (there); "la" and "le" not only play against each other in sound, but also in suggestion, because "la" is the feminine definite article and "le" the masculine.
"whisper / Heavenly labials": echoing Whitman, "whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear, / Labial gossip" ("Whispers of Heavenly Death" 1-2).
Infanta Marina
Contact 2 (Jan. 1921) with "Invective against Swans"; CP 7-8, LOA 6.
A beneficent muse figure for once, providing a poem of flowing language and flowing water, both fluent. The four stanzas coincide with four sentences, and end firmly with a rhymed couplet.
TITLE: an infanta (Sp.) is an infant and historically a princess who is daughter of the king and queen of Spain; here she is of the sea ("marina") and soon proves to be a type of genius loci. Verbally "infanta" is a rich pun on "fan" as (1) like some palm leaves (cf. Stevens's journal, L 84, 1905: "the fanlike starry palms ... were new"); (2) fan poetry and courtly fan language, evoked by Stevens's early fan poems like "She that winked her sandal-fan" in "Carnet de Voyage" (OP 6, LOA 523) and cf. "Gray Room" (OP 28-29, LOA 537-38); Stevens once said his early writing was like fan-painting (L 171, 1911); (3) fans and infans in Latin ("speaking" and "unspeaking," whence our word "infant," on which see Eliot's 1920 poem "Gerontion"). The puns all trope on the ways that this seascape speaks to us, through its personified genius loci, yet also does not speak except through our words.
"sleights of sail": a variation on "sleights of hand," and see further in L 785, 1953; cf. "The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man" (1939).
Domination of Black
Others 2 (Mar. 1916); CP 8-9, LOA 7.
One of Stevens's earliest major poems, but placed in Harmonium after six later poems that inform it, as does the major poem, "The Snow Man," that follows. On Stevens's sense of the poem, see L 151 (1928) and the appendix under "Logic." A firelit room is filled with moving colors that evoke the colors of fallen leaves, and indirectly evoke the well-known troping of fallen leaves as spirits of the dead, elsewhere directly alluded to ("Arcades of Philadelphia the Past"). The fireplace as a memory-place is central in many poems and stories, especially American ones. Stevens turns away from conventional developments of this topos with "Yes: but" and with his repeated "against," which also questions kinds of againstness. This is the first use of the first person in Harmonium, emphasized at each stanza's end, and a contrast with third-person "one" in "The Snow Man." The "I" sentences map the movement of the poem. The short lines work with some repeated end-words, and memorable use of repetition and of the rhyme "hemlocks"-"peacocks."
"Turned ... Turning": the play on "turn," a favorite word for poets, includes: (1) a descriptive use of colors turning in the room; (2) memories of leaves turning color; (3) the troping of leaves ("trope" means "turn" etymologically); (4) turning leaves or pages of a book; (5) turnings of the end of the line (note placement in the line); and later (6) the turning of the earth and apparent turning of the planets. Note the insistent anaphora in stanza 2.
"striding": so placed in the line that it elicits "striding" over the line-end, i.e., enjambment, literally "walking"; cf. Milton on Death, who comes "With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode" (PL II.676), and Wordsworth on the fearful peak that "Strode after me" (1850 Prelude I.385).
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
PREFACE ixACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
ABBREVIATIONS xiii
Biography 1
GLOSSES
Harmonium 29
Ideas of Order 87
The Man with the Blue Guitar 112
Parts of a World 132
Transport to Summer 171
The Auroras of Autumn 237
"The Rock" 279
Late Poems 298
APPENDIX: HOW TO READ POETRY, INCLUDING STEVENS 315
SHORT GLOSSARY 345
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 347
INDEX OF TITLES 351
What People are Saying About This
It looks to be an invaluable companion for readers of a great poet whom many find difficult, although attractive. I am most happy to have this splendid book in my library—where it will be in use as often as on the shelf. And I shall certainly be recommending it to colleagues and friends.
— Alastair Fowler, professor emeritus, University of Edinburgh
"It looks to be an invaluable companion for readers of a great poet whom many find difficult, although attractive. I am most happy to have this splendid book in my library—where it will be in use as often as on the shelf. And I shall certainly be recommending it to colleagues and friends."—Alastair Fowler, professor emeritus, University of Edinburgh"This is a much-needed book that offers a comprehensive guide to the poetry of Wallace Stevens. For each poem, Cook offers a brief general comment, then a series of glosses on difficult phrases and obscure references. Both comments and glosses are by turns incisive, erudite, and witty, and often shed more light on the poems than much more drawn-out and elaborate commentaries. Cook's prose is elegantly spare and direct. Her guide allows at every point for multiple meanings and resonances."—Roger Gilbert, Cornell University"New readers of Stevens must own this book, the ideal guide for starting out. . . . Cook's succinct summaries and annotations are confidently expert. . . . Long admired for her attention to syntactical word-play, Cook has a fine way here of describing meter as an aspect of form. . . . The book is littered with many . . . marvelous condensations. . . . The finest introductory close reading of 'The Man with the Blue Guitar' that has been published. . . . Although this book would seem to provide an atomized, poem-by-poem experience, its reader's greatest reward is the sense that he or she gets of the overall shape of the Stevensian project."—Al Filreis, University of Pennsylvania
This is a much-needed book that offers a comprehensive guide to the poetry of Wallace Stevens. For each poem, Cook offers a brief general comment, then a series of glosses on difficult phrases and obscure references. Both comments and glosses are by turns incisive, erudite, and witty, and often shed more light on the poems than much more drawn-out and elaborate commentaries. Cook's prose is elegantly spare and direct. Her guide allows at every point for multiple meanings and resonances.
— Roger Gilbert, Cornell University