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"When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Plot against the Giant." |
"The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Esthétique du Mal." |
"Freud's eye was the microscope of potency.
By fortune, his gray ghost may meditate
The spirits of all the impotent dead, seen clear,
And quickly understand, without their flesh,
How truly they had not been what they were."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Mountains Covered with Cats." |
"As if, as if, as if the disparate halves
Of things were waiting in a betrothal known
To none, awaiting espousal to the sound
Of right joining, a music of ideas, the burning
And breeding and bearing birth of harmony,
The final relation, the marriage of the rest."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Study of Images II." |
"The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. The Poems of Our Climate (l. 21-24). . .
Collected Poems [Stevie Smith]. James MacGibbon, ed. (1976) New Directions. |
"The death of Satan was a tragedy
For the imagination."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Esthétique du Mal." |
"Poet, be seated at the piano.
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Mozart, 1935." |
"They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Study of Two Pears (l. 9-12). . .
Collected Poems [Stevie Smith]. James MacGibbon, ed. (1976) New Directions. |
"A languid janitor bears
His lantern through colonnades
And the architecture swoons."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Public Square." |
"That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,
Just to stand still without moving a hand."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "A A Waving Adieudieudieu." |
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Wallace Stevens
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