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The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Stevens' "Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery"


Author(s): Helen Hennessy Vendler
Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter, 1966), pp. 136-146
Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087398
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Helen

Fendler

Hennessy

Stevens'

"Like Decorations

in a Nigger

Cemetery"

title
is an ellipsis: it should be read [My Poems Are] Like
in a Nigger
A flagrant
Decorations
simile for a
Cemetery.
The
wilderness of poems, fifty of them, an experiment in poetry as epigram,
or poetry as fossil bones: "Piece the world together,
boys, but not with
a
token
of
your hands" (192). The
poem,
things to come, is, like
the poetry of discon
many foretastes, perversely experimental. Though
nection is Stevens' most adequate form, and the gaps from "stanza" to
"stanza"
in the long poems will always challenge
the best efforts of
critical articulation, still the discontinuity will never again be so flagrant
as in this example. There
are no bridges here for the magnifico;
he
must
cynical,

migrate
some

from
bitter,

one

"floral
some

fragment, a mystique / For


are fragments
(265). They
to

reconstruct

ruses

that

refusing
shattered
by

some

Each

comic.

some
visionary,
is a "nigger

the spirit left helpless by the intelligence"


of vision, the mirror of the mind refusing
the

itself,

were

some

to another,

tribute"
prophetic,

the

attempt

a whole

to make

was

Harmonium

large.

by

the

from
no means

harmony: all of Stevens is in it, and not in embryo either, and its
tonal spectrum is as diverse as the one we find in Decorations,
but it is
less

because

shocking

the

are

tones

in

presented

separate

not

units,

the work seems


heaped together ruthlessly in one poem. In Decorations,
to be left to the reader, since he must do the ordering of impressions;
these are haiku as potentially
like the Adagia. Whether
articulable,
to be one
Decorations
is any more than fifty short pieces pretending
we
we must
in
if
is
but
believe
faith
Stevens'
debatable,
poem
good
assume he thought it a viable whole. His wholes were always melting
into

each

Grand
1
Noted

other,

Poem:

of

course;

Preliminary

inWallace

Stevens

he

once

Minutiae,"1
Checklist,

to

wanted

and

call

he

ed S. F. Morse,

Harmonium

thought,
p.

"The

as Samuel

10.

136
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Stevens9

in aNigger

"Like Decorations

Cemetery9

of calling his Collected


remarks in Ofus Posthumous,
French Morse
was all one poem to him,
of Harmonium"?it
Poems "The Whole
clearly, but yet he did divide it into parts.
as
The sense of death and fatal chill is the "subject" of Decorations,
itwill be the subject of The Auroras of Autumny but to read only physi
cal death into Stevens' lines is to limit his range. To be dead is not to
to "live a skeleton's life, / As a disbeliever in
live in a physical world,
all the bones in the world"
A
of
(OP, 117), and
countryman
reality, /
Stevens is afraid that he is already shrivelling into that dwarf-form. His
depletion is his specter, and his wrestlings with it make up Decorations.
resources of man facing death compose its metaphorical
The
range of
to
from
the desire for heaven,
from legacies left to heirs
reference,
to
stoicism to cynicism, from hedonism to nostalgia, from self-delusion
a willed belief that life is as real as death. Stevens chooses to express no
ac
preference among these attitudes, except by the implicit preference
corded by convention to the beginning and end.
into a prophetic figure be
of Whitman-as-sun
The mythologizing
a
in
the
somewhat
poem boldly,
tempered version of Stevens' bois
gins
terous tone. Instead of the ring of men chanting in orgy on a summer
we

morn,

have

the Whitman-sun

on

chanting

the

ruddy

shore

of

an

mo
day. He is a Jovian figure, moving with large-mannered
on
lumi
"A
and
the
tions,
horizon, glistening"
"rugged
giant,
(442),
nous" (479), one of Stevens' many chanting figures:
autumn

shall see the end.


is final, he chants. No man
Nothing
flame.
His
is of fire and his staff is a leaping
beard

in
Like the "new resemblance of the sun" in An Ordinary Evening
New Haven} this sun is "a mythological
form, a festival sphere / A great
bosom, beard and being, alive with age" (466), with all the equivocal
sentimentality still attached to our images of Jehovah. From this rather
flame, the poem proceeds to snow, and the immortality
self-indulgent
of

the

chanting

sun

gives

way,

in

the

end,

to

the

stoic's

revenge

shoes. Human
lopping off his feet, as Blake said, so as not to want
no defense against
is
in
the
stanza)
penultimate
solidarity (advocated
process; only wis
decay, since there is no strength that can withstand
dom, by its slyness, anticipates destruction,
slipping from the grip of
can winter do to one who has
winter by anticipating
its clasp. What
already forsaken casinos for igloos?

137
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The Massachusetts

Neither

One

of

the

But

the wise

leaves
man

nor

sand

. . .Can

all men,

that have

fallen

avenges

as

rock,

Review

his

by building
the

in

avenge

together,
in autumn?
city

but

Bible,

in snow.

(L)

and

not

snow;

house

but a city; and not "on," but "in," with its diffuseness of reference.
is stated as a proverb, and the suggested
This
preventive
avenging
it is phrased.
It
in which
is
reaffirmed
vengeance
by the dactyls
is a remark,

an

not

however,

mations

of

despair,
to regret

not

palace,
decorate

the

to

counter

the

autumn;

to

write

To

cemetery.

of

erosions
be
of

it means

what

accomplishment;

a city in snow is to use this rhetoric of cunning,

process

snow

the

man,

build

own

by one's
in short,

is not

that

nothing

to

to put to bold use inti


ice
to

and

there

is almost

for the
impossible to Stevens with his gift for nostalgic reminiscence,
poetry of the vanished, but to write of the nothing that is there ismore
possible to him, and accounts for some of his most brilliant poems ("The
"No Possum, No Sop, No T?ters,"
"The Plain Sense of
Snow Man,"
"The Course of a Particular").
The
rhetoric of nostalgia
Things,"
and the rhetoric of the minimal are at war in him (profitably) ; sadness
and

stoicism

listlessness.

the
the

joyless

It was

We

have
scarcely
to
as
irony

close

and

language

stoicism

that redeems

becomes

the

when

the

trees were

come.

poetry

it from

There

or

indifference

inveterate

the

norm,

leafless

their

blackness

became

the

eccentric

to be

Knew

of

particulars

aesthetician's

change

And

the

forth

in Stevens'

As

remarks

eye

and

contend,

is a curiosity

a name

for

extreme

tone

dryness
detachment

impersonal

first

in November

that one first


apparent,
the base of design.
(Ill)

of

can

this

sort,

as

verging,

it, grafting
bring
a sinister
onto
paradox

as

it does,

schoolmaster's
of

disorder,

all to express a tragic intimation. It is the tone of the doctor investigating


his own mortal disease and writing his report, an intrinsic pathos, as the
clinician records his own decline. Stevens is remarkable in his evasions
of

the

"one"

first
and

person
"he"

dramatic monologue.

("We
of

an

are

"we"

to

the

options

Stevens'

of

are

avoidance
as

as well

favorites,

many?

the

"I"

of

is perhaps tarnished by its long use in "high

"We"

: it
belongs

sentence"

of moral

the

and

singular,
and

rhetoric

of

sermons,

of

and

oratory,

political

verse. Though
Stevens is fond of its oracular potentialities
live in an old chaos of the sun") he uses it chiefly as a signal

experience

not

peculiar

to

the

poet,

reserving

for

that

special

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case

the

in aNigger

"Like Decorations

Stevens9

"he."

particularized

at will.
the

In

this
as

poems,

long

is uncomfort

Stevens

poems,

long

after a while, and prefers (abandoning his prac


to
to third-person
to change from first-person

able with any pronoun


tice in the Comedian)
second-person
of
eccentric

the

In

Cemetery99

respect
the

Decorations

again,

metamorphoses

speaker

the

is
from

most

detached

to a man alone
to one of us ("we")
aesthetician and scholar ("one")
a
man
to
I
with
my destroyers?")
grapple
having a dialogue
("Shall
to a commentator on someone else ("It needed
with a servant (XXVI)
the heavy nights of drenching weather / To make him return to peo
extreme

The

ple").
single

variation

"behind"

sensibility

say only that he is a man


the

of

compensations
statement

thematic

of

This
the

temptation
natural
tendency

at

cost

the

of making

to

and

age, death,
order

impose
to reduce

manner

by
Stevens

in such a

of some kind
the

can

we

of whom

on middle

assume

in defense,

us,

puppet-master

thoughts

to look for consistency

even

styles,

revolving

explains

makes

speakers
a

scene,

creation.

to his subject matter,


welter

of
the

en

disappear

tirely.
The

has a horror of dying "a parish death"


speaker of Decorations
a
cost
of
the
of
burial
which
pauper is borne by the parish), because
(in
the priest officiating in his opulent purple
the irony is too great: Death
and
How

white

death

is the question
(we

the

vestments;

to cheat

that

and
with

maimed

rites
our

to redeem

how

triumph,

cemetery

and

coffin

pine

of the poem,
the

decorate

of

the answer
grotesque

of

the

own

of course

pauper.

ignominy,

is both pitiful
and

poem-bouquets)

stern

our city in snow). The


third "answer"?that
the sun is
(we
eternal and so our death is fictitious, though it begins the poem, never
assumes any real importance in it, except in Section XLVII,
where
its
build

indifference

to

the world,

its

self-sustenance

("It

must

create

its colors

out of itself"), is insisted upon. The sections explicitly about


poetry2 both
attempt to exalt it by Stevens' religious intonations (VIII, XV, XXXVI,
and yet reduce it by its carnality (XIII)
and its ineffectual
XLVIII)
In the most
ironic passage of
"comedy of hollow sounds" (XXII).
all,

Stevens

visualizes

his

fifty

stanzas

as

so many

sausage

links,

pre

sided over by the "god of the sausages" or possibly an even more insig
a mere patron saint
nificant Muse,
sanctifying himself by a complacent
self-regard (XLII).

2
VII, VIII, XV, XXII, XXV, XXIX,
XLVII, XLVIII, inmy reading.

XXX, XXXII,

XXXIII,

XXXVI,

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Review

The Massachusetts

is its abjuring of verbs?in at


The oddest characteristic of Decorations
least a fifth of the poem the stanzas are syntactically
incomplete, and
verbs have been dispensed with. Partly, this yields a quality of epigram
which helps to give the poem its ex
it strengthens
the sense that these are
the
of
the
inspector of gravestones. Usu
daily pens?es
jottings, adagia,
can
be
the
verbs
ally,
easily supplied (Stevens is not interested in mysti
fication for its own sake) but the absence of an opening clause imperson
of sight, out of mind")
traordinary aridity, and partly
("Out

alizes the topic further:


What we confront in death is
I want

What

we

What

to write

truly

about
is

experience

is> Not
) But

the ocean
the ugly

Things

of

the virtuosi
the mask

alien,

that

speaks

unintelligible, yet understood. (XXXIX)

stanza could imply any of the previous beginnings, but its strength
formula used in this stanza (Not X but Y)
lies in not needing them. The
and
is one of Stevens' commonest
(derived perhaps from Wordsworth),
or "he saw." The ab
is frequently preceded elsewhere by "he wanted"

The

sence

here

of

to

perception"

a verb

such
the

creates

reader,

with

the

phrase

no

as

intervening

an

immediate
subject,

of
"object
as Stevens

achieves the poetry of no perceiver, the landscape poetry of the mind, so


to speak. The personal voice is so desperately intrusive with its clamor of
selfhood, and yet invented personae carry the immediate flavor of
irony. One solution, adopted here, is to drop the subject voice entirely.
Another
is to reproduce the interior musing of the mind, as the mind
to itself of its
to itself, needs no explanations
has no subject-relation
own hurdles, and can speak in ellipses:
The

album

of Corot

is premature.

A little later when the sky is black.


Mist that is golden is not wholly mist.
If we

supply the missing


album

The
mist

but

still

if he waited
manticized]

of Corot
lets

some

links of the criticism of Corot,


is premature
sunlight

he
[because
He
would
linger.

until] A little later when


Mist

that

(XXXVIII)

is golden

pretends
really

it might

read:

to be
painting
mist
be painting

the sky is black [because a ro

is not wholly

mist.

140

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Stevens9

is flavored with epigram in the punning near


a dry comedy
golden, wholly, mist; and something like

chiasmus?mist,
supervenes

Cemetery"

dismissal

truncated

The

in aNigger

"Like Decorations

on

the

of

foreboding

the

line.

second

of

One

the

continuing

to watch his rapidity of change as he is


pleasures of reading Stevens is
flickered by various feelings. Despair overlaid by wry cynicism?"There
succeeded immediately by a
is no such thing as innocence in autumn"?is
never lost" (XLIV).
The
is
it
innocence
of
may be,
hope?"Yet,
pallor
autonomy

of

the

stanzas

of Decorations

that

suggest

all

its

exertions

Stevens can order


exist simultaneously rather than successively. Though
his poems temporally (as his nostalgias, farewells, and prophecies attest)
here, as in other long poems, the unity is radial, not linear. Stevens' true
becomes the complexity of mental response, the
subject in Decorations
in

intimations,

these

stanzas,

fifty

of

all

almost

responses

possible

to

it does not
the decay that is its topic. If this is a poetry of meditation,
have the sustained progressive development we know in other meditative
of intimation and dismissal, of fits
poets: it is the staccato meditation,
and starts, revulsions and shrugs, lightenings and sloughs, the play of
the mind and sensibility over a topic.
are of three or four
Except for two sections (I and IV), the stanzas
on
very simple rhetorical figures for
lines, and depend almost entirely
for instance, in the dominating contrasts of sum
their form?antithesis,
mer and winter, rich and poor, the mechanical
and the human,
the
social and the private :
A bridge above the bright and blue of water

Such antitheses
ing
the

the
living

speaker

the

Rich

Tweedle-dum,

bridge

when

the

river

The

apparel.
dead,

is frozen.

poor Tweedle-dee.

stress the indistinguishability

qualitative
and
the
stands

same

And

and

between

the

Between

farewell

decorations

the

systems
and

(XXIV)

of the basic forms underly


are

not-yet-dead-but
of antitheses,

the

absence

a mediation

between

no-longer-quite-alive

of

farewell,

The final mercy and the final loss,


The wind and the sudden falling of the wind.

(X)

Sometimes the rhetorical figure will come from logic, as in the deliber
ately trivial arithmetic by which one ascertains the density of life by divid
or in the more enig
ing the number of legs one sees by two (XLIII),
:
matic series of instances followed by an induction of section XXIII

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The Massachusetts
are

The

fish

The

grain
hunter

The

Consider

Review

in the Ashman's

window,

is in the baker's

shop,

falls.
shouts as the pheasant
of regret.
the odd morphology

This poem is one of regret; placing decorations on graves is a gesture


for
of regret; and yet these actions are reserved by the human world
its own

members

fish, the wheat,


of

sorts

all

no

alone;

but rather we

the pheasant,

without

every

regret

on

is expended

regret

day.

the

But

the

deaths

of

compression

the

of

in death

buy, sell, and deal

verse

the

forces us to leap from the three instances to the antithesis of the final
ironic line without the gliding smoothness of conventional logic.
The

internal

vanished

poverty,
ous
birds)

but

are

in Decorations

echoes

reference

of metaphorical

religion
there

set

again,

the

against
is no particular

with

casual,

in the ascendant

certain

spheres

and

(sun and frost, wealth

new

sung

hymns
consistency.

the

by

There

vari
for

are,

about birds3 (I omit the pheasant, who does not


instance,
but
birds
sing
only falls) and they vary in symbolic meaning. The
more
at
in
the
lascivious
than
rinds
yellow patios, / Pecking
"singing
are
and
From
both
satirized
sheer
Gem?tlichkeit"
ours, /
(XIII),
envied in their sensual and sentimental and stupid ease. To
equate las
civiousness with bourgeois Gem?tlichkeit
is to dismiss it aesthetically
six poems

rather
tion

than
of

of

metry
than

absence
The
morally.
next
the unmated
bird,

the
a

female

leaden

have

she would

of possible
leaden

mate.

been

in

who

pigeon

he

her,

Imagining
reality,

is the

lasciviousness

not

her

makes

misses
makes
leaden

depriva
the
sym

her

better

but

silver,

but ideal, and creates a transcendent ethereal bird who,


other Stevensian ideal figures, lives in a place of perpetual undulation

not mortal

on the entrance
gate
pigeon
of a leaden mate,
the symmetry
see her fans of silver undulate.
(XIV)

The

leaden

Must

miss

Must

and

Oriole

crow,

like
:

the

extremes

of music

in

the

natural

world,

form

and comment on the tendency of the declin


simple opposition (XXV),
to distrust the beautiful and opulent. The
of
cemeteries
decorator
ing
sterile
a

fowls

androgynous

night

creature,

are

obscure

of

section

XXX,

in reference,

one
but

a
they

day
are

creature
perhaps

and
allied

3
XIII, XIV, XXV, XXX, XXXIII, XLVI.

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one
to

Stevens9
sun

the

and

"Like Decorations
two

those

moon,

elements

in aNigger

Cemetery99

between

Crispin

which

voyages.

they are impotent :

Singly,

The

hen-cock

crows

The

cock-hen

crows

Hen

shudders:

the

and lays no egg.


cockerel
shrieks,

at midnight
all day. But
copious

egg

and

is made

laid.

The final fertility, Stevens might say, is in the journey back and forth
between the antithetical states, not in any imagined confluence of oppo
sites. Only with the interp?n?tration, but no identification, of the anti
thetical elements can the shrill vocalism of crowing become the copious
an

egg,

exhibit

here

scrutinized

at arm's

length.

he finds his rarity


As for the rare and royal purple bird (XXXIII),
not exalting but boring; like the poet of abnormal sensibility, he has no
if only to provide some fictitious
company, and must sing to himself,
the
of royalty, it is also, in Stevens,
is
color
company. Though
purple
the color of middle age, of the malady of the quotidian, leading "through
all its purples to the final slate" (96) of some unimaginable
bleakness.
an
us
with
the
of
Stevens
leaves
Finally,
impotence of poetry
image
live
it
much
lustier
may
blurs, it lives un
beyond
radiantly
?though
not the song of the
Time,
certainly and not for long (XXXII).
cuckoo (even though cuckoos, if any bird, might appeal to the mad
is the regulative principle of this clanking mechanism,
the
clockmaker),
world :
Everything
Of a man
the

Of

that

All

that

expects

enough,
as

the

like

a clock. The

cabinet

after all, for time,


in spite
mad,
a man with
a mania
for clocks.
(XLVI)

cuckoos,

Stevens

tainly traditional
understood

ticks
gone

of

his

reader,

is a

then,

that birds are a figure

context

differs,

so will

hazy

the

bird.

cer

notion,

for poetry,

but
a

In

it is

context

of clock-time, he will be a cuckoo; in a context of exalted and lonely


rarity, he will be a purple bird; in a context of fertility and shrillness,
cock and hen; in a context of the ideal, a pigeon;
in the context of
versus
of
oriole
context
and
the
in
of reality, in
crow;
song,
beauty
the

yellow

patios,

an

anonymous

figure,

"meaningless

natural

effigy"

trite and uninteresting


until given a "revealing aberration" by
(XX),
the observant eye. This flexibility of reference is necessary in
invoking
other

image

clusters

Stevens' metaphors

in

the

theatre,

poem?the

are extremely

provisional

the

weather,

and

so

on.

in their species, but quite

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The Massachusetts

Review

permanent in their genus, and the vegetation


the Collected Poems declare.
The

to

alternative

the

varying

still abounds

of

species

bird

is of

in forms, as

course

to

vary

the environment of the bird, as Stevens does in Thirteen Ways


of Look
a
a
at
that
in
and
its
poem
ing
Blackbird,
epigrammatic
elliptic form
as
Decorations
its
variational
scheme
resembles
"Sea
anticipates
(just
Surface Full of Clouds" or "Variations on a Summer Day" and as its
or Necessity,
theme is allied to "Domination
of Black"). The Ananke,
as
of Decorations,
in
the
the
Blackbird
black
appears
principle, the
eccentric which
is the base of design, the strict, the final, the intrinsic,
the limiting, the temporal. The
blackbird is the only element in nature
which
is aesthetically
compatible with bleak light and bare limbs: he
is, we

may

say,

certain

kind

of

language,

to

opposed

euphony,

to

those "noble accents and lucid inescapable rhythms" which


Stevens
used so memorably
elsewhere in Harmonium.
To choose the blackbird
over the pigeon is a possible aesthetic for Stevens, and it is different
from

the

aesthetic

who

of Crispin

arrant

chose

stinks,

the

anti-aesthetic.

are thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird because thirteen is


There
the eccentric number (Stevens is almost medieval
in his relish for ex
ternal form). This poetry will be one of inflection and innuendo;
the
is said (the whistling
inflections are what
and the
of the blackbird)
:
innuendoes are what is left out (the silence just after the whistling)
I do not

The
Or

know

to

which

prefer,

beauty of inflections
the beauty

of

innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling


Or just after. (V)
As a description of both Blackbird and Decorations
this could hardly be
improved upon.
The blackbird, symbol for the condition of being, has perhaps some
thing in common with Eliot's "shadow" that falls between potency and
But Stevens would
act, desire and consummation.
deny that it is a
it
intrusion between two things that without
remediable or accidental
would

be better off.

It is, rather,

of one substance with

the things

relates:
A man
Are

and

a woman

and

a woman

one.

A man

and

a blackbird

Are one. (IV)

144
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it

Stevens9

the man

Between

in aNigger

"Like Decorations
the woman

and

is the

blackbird,

Cemetery99
one

with

them

; be

is the blackbird, the inde


the man's mood and his environment
cause
man's
of
is
the
mood
which
response to nature (VI) ;
cipherable
and their imagined golden birds is the
between the man of Haddam
blackbird, the real on which they construct their "artifice of eternity"
man and his protective glass coach is the
(VII) ; between the haunted
terror of the blackbird (XI) ; it lies at the base even of our relation to
our own defenses, those beautiful glass coaches of euphony and lucidity.
It is, finally, the principle of our final relation to the universe, our tem
porality, first of all :
tween

The

river

is moving.

The blackbird must be flying. (XII)


and lastly, our death :
It was

all afternoon.

evening

It was

snowing
it was going

And

to snow.

The blackbird sat


In the cedar-limbs. (XIII)
a pervasive relational
temporality and death are only instances of
as
extent
in
well
in
Our
space (as
time) goes only as far
eccentricity.
as it
as the blackbird goes?the
blackbird is our "line of vision" (IX),

But

is our

line

of

thought:

we

when

are

two

of

minds

(or,

as Stevens

presses

it is not as if we had a blackbird, an oriole, and a


it, "of three minds"),
pigeon in view, but only "a tree / In which there are three blackbirds"
(II). The blackbird is by no means all?it is surrounded by the vastness
of

twenty

the

mountains,

autumn

winds,

the

snow?but

though

only

small part, it is the determining


is undoubt
focus of relation. Blackbird
a
more
structure
of
than
fineness
finished poem
its
Decorations}
edly
as
his
remarkable
for
Stevens
pursues
strength,
single image
making
for a single theme through several aspects. Its subject (the "new
aesthetic"

of

the

spare

and

the

eccentric,

as

it arises

from

flaw

and

prohibits the use of the oratorical mode of Sunday Morntngy


mortality)
a mode which becomes a blemish in certain stanzas (notably VIII
and
the
of
Decorations.
Blackbird
predominantly
XLVIII)
tight-reined
sentence reduced almost to the in
depends on the simple declarative
as
sentence
and
the
declarative
is the simplest grammatical
fantile,
just
so
is
the
rhetorical
form, and Stevens deliber
figure,
tautology
simplest
it:
ately approaches

145
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The Massachusetts
A man

and

a woman

and

a woman

Review

one.

Are

A man

and

a blackbird

Are one. (IV)


It was

snowing

And itwas going to snow. (XIII)


I know.

. .. accents.

..

But I know
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know. (VIII)
Like

Stevens' exotisme voulu, this is simplicity voulu, calling flamboyant


attention to itself, as the unobtrusive
simplicity of colloquial language
does not. As an instrument, it is brilliant but limited, and clearly will not
do

for

much

more

than

thirteen

stanzas.

The

increased

comes at the cost of high finish, but promises


Decorations
still far away, in the greater long poems to come. Meanwhile,
poems
naturally

represent
together
voluminous
self,

daringly
later

poem,

varied meditative
to sacrifice

finish

Stevens'
a new

form,
for

most
asperity

remarkable
of

language

and a willingness,
experiment's

of

expanse

perfections
these two

compression
a
over
long

of
span,

his
a

in the case of the

sake.

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