"Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself"
by Wallace Stevens
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 mâché . . .
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.
6 comments:
I guess not!
I was going to research it today - of course the day is always busier than I think it's going to be.
On first reading - even second - it has a nice "feel" to it - evocative of March - at least today's gray, cold, rainy Wednesday.
Did you check out ululate.blogspot.com - a July 7, 2008 post about this poem?
An interesting take on it.
I like Wallace Stevens - often don't try to understand him as much as feel him.
I hadn't seen that post (here). Thank you. I have to confess that I often take poems like this at face value (see also: William Carlos Williams). Sometimes I just take away an image or a feeling and that is enough for me.
I definitely had to agree with the blog author that "the last line of this poem is utterly disappointing, taking abstraction to the point of dullness, and if I were his creative writing teacher I would have underlined this and asked him to rewrite it!"
I don't know much about poetry in general or wallace stevens in particular. I usually feel excluded from poetry. Especially in the last 50 years, I feel the medium has become a bastion of elite and erudite expression, written by literary types for other literary types. This criticism is not new and may be unfounded, but I am not surprised that I don't get it. I never get it. Although, recently, I was introduced to a poem that I sort of get, and thought back to your Frost "Acquainted With the Night" posting from years ago. Perhaps you will like it:
Rain
Jack Gilbert
Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.
I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain
I tend to agree about today's poetry, Karl, although I still like much of it.
I do like the rain poem. Sad but I like it. I hadn't heard it. And I love that you remembered my Acquainted with the Night post...I really connected with that poem! Good old Bobby Frost! (as I call him)
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