Poetry Stevens' subjects are the interplay between imagination and reality, and the relation between consciousness

and the world. In Stevens, "imagination" is not equivalent to consciousness or "reality" to the world as it exists outside our minds. Reality is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Or rather, as the title of one of his late poems puts it, Stevens sees reality "as the activity of the most august imagination." Reality is an activity, not a static object, because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world. Stevens sees the poet (who, as for Wordsworth, is qualitatively the same as other people) as continually creating and discarding cognitive depictions of the world. These cognitive depictions find their outlet and their best and final form as words; and thus Stevens can say, "It is a world of words to the end of it, / In which nothing solid is its solid self." His most general and impressive statement in this vein comes in a poem called "Men Made out of Words," in which he says: "Life / Consists of propositions about life.". Stevens also believed that, for life to be worth living or (what was for him a very similar thing) poetry to be worth reading, the words we choose to express the world must constantly change. As he noted in "The Man with the Blue Guitar": Throw away the lights, the definitions, And say of what you see in the dark That it is this or that it is that, But do not use the rotted names. Constant change is necessary for two reasons. First, our world can be seen not as a whole, but in parts, and changing parts at that. We live in a world of "pitches and patches"; we are Thinkers without final thoughts In an always incipient cosmos, The way, when we climb a mountain, Vermont throws itself together. Second, without change life and poetry would be stagnant, as Stevens depicts heaven as being in his best-known poem, "Sunday Morning": "Is there no change of death in paradise? / Does ripe fruit never fall?" "Death," says Stevens in the same poem, "is the mother of beauty," because only that which changes is beautiful, and death is the last form of change and the guarantor of transiency.

Stevens was well aware that the intellect is often used to avoid reality rather than confront it. In "Loneliness in Jersey City" he parodies both religious and scientific analysis with meaningless statements such as "The deer and the dachshund are one" and: The distance between the dark steeple And cobble ten thousand and three Is more than a seven-foot inchworm Could measure by moonlight in June. As Stevens notes in the same poem, "The steeples are empty and so are the people" religion and science have tended to find comfortable substitutes for reality rather than describe it accurately. The need constantly to re-create reality is what makes Stevens's work so various but at the same time so unified. Along with his flawless ear and constant inventiveness, it is what gives rise to the verbal pyrotechnics of his poetry. Although there necessarily cannot be a final destination to Stevens's poetry, some of the greatest moments of his poems come when Stevens catches a glimpse, so to speak, of the secular transcendence that ultimately lies beyond a poem - for example, when in "To an Old Philosopher in Rome", he speaks of "Things dark on the horizons of perception", of "the shadow of a shape" that constitutes A light on the candle tearing against the wick To join a hovering excellence, to escape From fire and be part only of that of which Fire is the symbol: the celestial possible. Reception and Influence From the first, critics and fellow poets recognized Stevens's genius. While in college, he exchanged sonnets with George Santayana. In the 1930s, the rationalist Yvor Winters criticized Stevens as a decadent hedonist but acknowledged his great talent. Hart Crane wrote to a friend in 1919, after reading some of the poems that would make up Harmonium, "There is a man whose work makes most the rest of us quail." Beginning in the 1940s, critics such as Randall Jarrell spoke of Stevens as one of the major living American poets, even if they did so (as Jarrell did) with certain reservations about Stevenss work. After Stevens's death, it was Harold Bloom who did the most among critics to assure Stevens's position in the canon as a great poet, and perhaps the greatest American poet of the 20th century. Other major critics, such as Helen Vendler and Frank Kermode, have added their voices and analysis to this verdict. Many poets, James

Merrill and Donald Justice most explicitly, have acknowledged Stevens as a major influence on their work, and his impact may also be felt in John Ashbery, John Hollander, and others.

On Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens was a consummate refutation of the impression that life must be frantic. He was a lawyer, born in Reading, Pennsylvania, October 2, 1879, entered Harvard when eighteen and was a graduate of The New York Law School. In 1934 he became Vice-President of the Accident and Indemnity Company of Hartford, having been associated with the company while in New York previous to 1916, the year in which he moved to Hartford. He died August 2, 1955. He was in magnificent contrast with the two Dromios in The Comedy of ErrorsThey must be bound and laid in some dark room. He was equipoise itself, although he could be displeasedin fact, angered by an imposter. People have a way of saying, I dont understand poetry. What does this mean? The query does not seem to me contemptible. However, Wallace Stevens did not digress to provide exegeses for bewildered readers. It should be known, I think, that fees which he received for lectures and readings, he gave anonymously to young poets whose ability and sincerity impressed him, or young magazines with a spirit he liked. He did not mix poetry with business. The more you feel a thing, he felt, the less excuse there is for being irresponsible. Phrases sometimes came to him on his way to the office in a taxi, he said, but you may be sure that Frogs eat butterflies, snakes eat frogs was not written in the office. Regarding the sense of tragedy hanging over the world, he said, What the poet has, is not a solution but some defense against it (p. 697, Lives of the Poets by Louis Untermeyer). My final point, he says in his book, The Necessary Angel, is that imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos. domination of black, by wallace stevens Domination of Black At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind.

Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. The colors of their tails Were like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind. They swept over the room, Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks Down to the ground. I heard them cry the peacocks. Was it a cry against the twilight Or against the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, Turning as the flames Turned in the fire, Turning as the tails of the peacocks Turned in the loud fire, Loud as the hemlocks Full of the cry of the peacocks? Or was it a cry against the hemlocks? Out of the window, I saw how the planets gathered Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. I saw how the night came, Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks. I felt afraid. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. (from, Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p.7) **** When I read this poem I can't help wondering if WS wanted to give his own treatment to the themes and motifs of Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven.' This doesn't mean he was being imitative, or derivative, as literary critics love to suggest, if only even one unusual word has been used by some previous great poet. Just that he thought he'd like to 'play around' with his own version of something dark and brooding, that takes place during 'the death season' (Autumn, witness the Christian All Souls Day, All Saints Day and Halloween, and the Mexican 'Day of the Dead' all occuring during the Fall season). And to work, once again, with a bird most significant to the poem.

Wallace Stevens must have been very aware of birds, as he often focused on them in his poems significantly. All the critics agree that WS was using a number of words and images in this poem to represent death, (or 'annihilation?'): night, twilight, fire (which implies 'darkness'), 'fallen leaves' and 'hemlocks' (which are dark foreboding-looking trees, as well as being forever associated in western minds with death, specifically the forced suicide of Socrates), and blackness. I find his choice of 'peacocks' interesting, however. Helen Vendler calls their cry 'ambiguous' (H. Vendler, Words Chosen Out of Desire, p. 67), but I think of it as 'preternatural,' which is a form of ambiguity: something that is neither of this world, nor of the other. The tails of the peacocks' - 'the color of their tails' - have often been compared to 'eyes,' and if so, these 'eyes', here, are 'night' eyes, colored with the deep, intense iridescent colors of dream. They are, so to speak, 'dream eyes,' and hence belong already to that other world that 'night,' 'autumn' and 'death' all point toward. If the peacock was chosen because of this 'otherworldliness', then it seems as if he is asking a question about whether or not 'death' is 'annihilation.' "Loud as the hemlocks/Full of the cry of the peacocks?/Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?" He has moved to the level of the cosmic by bringing in the circling of the planets in the lines above. Plus, the motif of constant 'turning' also suggests a mixing of two worlds, an alternation, a turning-round, an about-face between the day world and the night world, the world of the living and the world of the dead, the everyday world and the cosmic world of the planets: that dynamic of constant changing ('turning'), and cyclic alternating that occurs throughout nature. The 'wheel of time' has been used around the world to express this; in the east as the 'wheel of death and rebirth', and in the Christian west, which desires a more linear kind of time, (in accord with its triumphalistic myth), it still nevertheless persists as the 'wheel of fortune.' 'Turning over in our minds' is another kind of turning. This is the kind of 'turning' C.G. Jung referred to in his concept of 'circumambulating the center.' Well, all of these are the secret areas of life: death, night, change, turning, reflecting, darkness, dream, cosmos. The peacock, even by its very look and sound, suggests the possibility of some entirely other order of being. And that same suggestion, made by dreams, visions, preternatural experiences, and creatures like the peacock, has intrigued human beings from the beginning of time. It's interesting that Helen Vendler finds there are literary secrets in this poem as well. She writes "There is yet another secrecy in (this poem), its concealing of progress in its series of self-embedding clauses. This special form, which we encounter in 'Domination of Black,' offers a syntactic version of the series of receding planes with which we are familiar in painting. " (ibid., p. 48) Helen Vendler is always dead-on when it comes to syntactical analysis.

Vendler began her thoughts on The Snowman but carried them over to Domination of Black. She is examining Stevens handling of different orders of magnitude (ibid., p. 66), and writes: Domination of Black shows all possible relations (whether a relation by of or by in or by like or by over or by from or by to or by against or by as) as equally impotent against the night. The various living or moving orders of being colors, vegetative nature (leaves), animal nature (the peacocks), natural motion (the wind), household life (the hearth-fire), cosmic life (the planets), and natural utterance (the cry of the peacocks) are all assimilated to each other by the sinuous prepositions and conjunctions of the poem until they become indistinguishable; against all these orders of being is set another color (black), another natural reality (night), another vegetation (the Stygian hemlocks), and by implication, another order of being death, perhaps suicide. Of course, the despotic order of magnitude asserted by the repetitive weight placed on night, black, and the hemlocks is countered by the pride of place given to the peacocks and their ambiguous cry; they are the climax of each of the three stanzas. A presentational magnitude of location in the case of the peacocks, then, is opposed to a dramatic magnitude of assertion of blackness, and we might say that animal utterance and meaninglessness come to a standoff. (ibid., pp. 66-67) I agree with Vendler up until the last sentence. If my own theory about the peacocks is correct, then Stevens is finding something in the peacocks that participates in the nature of night, blackness, hemlocks and death, but that cries against our normal ideas about these. This can change our perspective about them (our previous fiction), if we will only look through different eyes, as suggested by the tails of the peacocks, that is through the perspective of dream eyes, the colorful eyes of an oriental bird. The peacock is associated with India, as witness the title of a book on US-India relations, entitled The Eagle and the Peacock, (found through a Questia.com search). In the West, because of a rather toxic mixture of a linear historical myth that springs from Christian metaphysics, and the conclusion of the scientific revolution that we have no proof of an afterlife, death and hemlock and blackness and night, etcetera, have come to be associated with utter annihilation. But in the East, as witness the text of the traditional hymn, Ya Devi Sarva Bhuteshu, the goddess (ie God) is identified with sickness and death.* These are just another way of experiencing the divine. It seems to me that Stevens is suggesting that he finds something within this tableau that stands against the Darkness, and that something is the cry of the peacocks. By the way, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2000, (as found on Questia.com), under the heading Early Christian Art and Architecture: Among motifs that symbolized the hope of resurrection and immortality are the fish and the peacock. Also, under the heading of Hera, I find that Frequently (Hera) is associated with the pomegranate, symbol of marital love and fruitfulness. The

peacock was sacred to her. Given Stevens appreciation of sexuality, and at times of marriage and progeny (The Comedian as the Letter C), perhaps these suggestions are also meant to be present in his choice of peacocks (aside from their obvious rhyme with hemlocks.) It is my belief that we can learn a great deal about Stevens poetry by looking at its associations with Christianity, the classics and with Oriental perspectives, and this is the particular view I wish to take towards his work in this weblog. I look forward to exploring this perspective in my posts. *There are examples of this perspective in Christianity, as well, for example in the mysticism of Ste. Therese de Lisieux, but it does not seem to be the mainstream perspective, at least, to my knowledge. "Domination of Black" The poem " Domination of Black" by Wallace Stevens takes place on an early autumn night, focusing at one point on a person in a room thinking about darkness, while a fire is going in a fireplace nearby. A few images appear repetitively, which tie the poem together more clearly. The poem begins by describing the setting: night time, by a fire indoors. Then explaining that the colors of the fallen leaves and bushed nearby outside have changed color. This is visible to the person inside by the fireplace. From a deeper meaning, this may be explained by the way leaves and branches appear different as they are looked at while pulled upward or about in the wind. Here a different appearance is achieved before falling back into place as normal. From here a reference is made to the color of the large hemlocks. Their color is said to be striding, in other words walking, almost as if they are getting closer to the indoors. "Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks came striding." (Stevens 68) From here an image of a cry of peacocks is heard. Their cry is uncertain at this point, while much is left open for interpretation. Next the colors of the peacock's tails are being explained in terms of the leaves that have fallen and are turning in the wind. A specific reference to the twilight wind is made. "Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind." (Stevens 68) This "twilight" setting may prove to be a negative effect on the situation overall. Following this the leaves are being described as sweeping across the room. The scene is made clearer by being compared to the way the leaves flew from the branches of the hemlocks of above, quickly down to the ground below. "Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks." (Stevens 68) Once again a cry by the peacocks is heard. This time the reason for it is given. Their cry being caused by either the leaves, or a cry against the twilight. At this point is seems as though the reason would lie more within the twilight than simply the leaves falling and moving about. At this point it may begin to be considered as a period of uncertainty, or decline in some form, before the following day is on its way. Following this a period of turning is introduced. The branches and thus leaves were said to be turning in the wind, as the flames were moving about in the fireplace. Once again the peacocks are brought in, this time their cry is related to what seems to be the noise made by the

fire burning. Possibly due to the sound and cracking and splitting of the logs due to the extreme heat of the fire. Their cry could however be toward the hemlock trees, which in some way could be considered poisonous. Next, planets out the window are being described as being in a pattern similar to the leaves that have fallen on the ground below. A reference between the leaves turning and the planets moving is used to describe how night has come, due to the planets revolving. "Out of the window, I saw how the planets gathered like the leaves themselves." (Stevens 69) Night is then said to be walking, striding like the large hemlocks, where the person shows some sort of fear. From here the person remembers the cry of the peacocks, which seems to act as an omen of warning toward the poisonous hemlock trees while it is twilight. Domination of Black Ive been reading a fair bit of Wallace Stevens recently. Ive always liked Stevens. I dont know of any body of poetry that sounds better than his. The precision of his thought, the scope of his imagination, and his manipulation of rhythm put most poets in the shade. All these qualities are important to the success of Domination of Black, from Stevenss first collection, Harmonium, which he published in 1923 at the age of 44. The poem requires the reader to see a fire with the colours of leaves turning in a room, peacock tails in a fire, and loud hemlocks. Normal expectations must be suspended. However literally the images are expressed, the description goes beyond a literal scene, and it goes straight to the heart like a barbed arrow. The overarching approach of night, fear, death whatever it all amounts to dominates the poem, and its hard as a reader not to feel a chill creeping down your back. The rhythms are wonderfully effective. Consider the lines: RePEATing themSELVES, TURNED in the ROOM, Like the LEAVES themSELVES TURNing in the WIND. Look at those two short syllables in the middle of the first of those lines, followed by the thumping long drawn-out ones, with a line-break stretching out 'selves/turned' further still, and then more anapaestic (short-short-long) syllable sets broken by the near-repeated 'selves/turn' once again on the bridge of third and fourth lines. The turning gains emphasis from the controlled rhythm and continues to do so throughout the poem. Its brilliant writing. Repetition is integral. It creates a sense of inevitability, an increasing weight of doom, a mesmorising force. The hemlocks have an aura of death. Those peacocks with their

awful cry act partly as a warning, partly as protest, partly as helplessness. And yet the poem is so beautiful. Introduction A dictionary definition of modernism is modern artistic or literary philosophy and practice; esp.: a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression. Formally speaking, the modernist literary period covers most of the first half of the twentieth century, starting with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and closing with the end of World War II in 1945. Generally speaking, modern poetry is any new or innovative poetry from contemporary times back to Walt Whitman who was a poetic innovator and model for later poets (p. xxxvii). The first feature of modern poetry is a focus on newness as expressed in Ezra Pounds slogan make it new and William Carlos Williamss assertion Nothing is good save the new. The goal was to break the formal rules of poetry and find new modes of expression required by modern times (p. xl). The second feature of modern poetry is a desire to make it difficult. The complexity of modern times demanded an equally complex poetry. Unlike earlier poetry, modern poetry generally presented ideas, experiences, and sensory perceptions directly, unfiltered by explanations, their immediacy and directness paradoxically contribute to their difficulty (p. xliii). The third feature of modern poetry is an emphasis on the imagination. Modern poets search for adequate fictions, fictions verging on facts, what is imagined reshaping what is seen, and their imaginative quest may be said to culminate in Stevenss pursuit of a supreme fiction (p. xliv). The fourth and final feature of modern poetry is its international scope. Advances in travel and communications made it easier for people and knowledge to move around the globe. More readily than ever before, poets could physically and intellectually relocate themselves and experience new locales and cultures (p. xliv). Ironically, modernisms globalism spawned a linguistic and poetic nativism within which [some] poets struggled to carve out a literary space for the local (p. xlvi). In their own ways, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams insisted on writing about American subjects in American English. In doing so, they were emulating Walt Whitman and building upon the foundation of modernism. Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was an insurance company executive by day, and a poet by night. He kept his business life separate from his literary life. In his literary

life, he seemed to have little to do with other writers. Even so, his poetry is vivid and imaginative. His poems reflect his concern that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of the earth remains to be written (p. 235). Like Whitman, Stevens doesnt use rhyme, though he often uses regular meter. Also, he uses American locales and settings in his poetry, not so much as they actually are, but as devices, necessary fictions, used in his exploration of reality and the role of imagination in creating reality. Sunday Morning uses a quiet weekend morning in an American home as a point of departure to question religious faith in general and Christianity specifically. The Idea of Order at Key West uses the experiences of the island as fodder for an exploration of the nature and use of imagination (p. 236). Stevens is a modernist in his emphasis on imagination. While imagination is the liberty of the mind, it must ultimately express agreement with reality. In Stevenss view, imagination is vitally necessary to endure the violence of the modern world. It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. (p. 236)