pS STRONG W WORDS poets on modern poetry edited by W.N. HERBERT MATTHEW HOLLISGERTRUDE STEIN Geta Sein (187-149 wa the prin el grein dn emarable ieverton of Amsericne who sete in Faroe atthe i the lt cont She sie in Pai in 190 nein hel a ascnteoPesn and the French avan-prde, Her poetry, dough seas secondary #9 her re upuaring of pom wrk, note tke pap the rit trys ttf to match he rail cange wrought on Wester a by Cain, Where Cats resonsigured perspective, Stein reconstructed spt and payed with ‘he eee tre of langage im Tender Baton (191), Stora Med tain (1956, and an extrancnay exploration, seat 2 Seconstracton, of serait, "Ling Bey Her work, often eich or ck freee fn provi, cam achieve an ete, unpompou one and frequently bath ‘anos nd resting He ifloece on subsequent generation of Ari pret, prclry bere Dancin snd Frsk O'Han, bs bea marked er esay ‘Poet and Gra” ected im Lok at Me Naw and Hee 14m 1987) projet the grammatical units af a entence and eve pane ‘uation atthe main sagt of any piece Of woking, and poy tha octey the main charter i the noun. Pose ave alfa of val, of ncaing withthe et of mang Explaining ‘a rose is a rose is a rose” 97197) Now listen, Cant you see chat when language was new — as i was with Chaucer and Homer ~the poet enuld se the name of a Ind the thing was relly thre, He cul sy "0 moon, ‘Ose’ "0 love’, and the moon and the sea and love were really there, And ‘ean you see that after hundreds of years had gone by and thou snd of poems had been writen, he could call on those words and find that they were just worn out Biterary words. The exciting- ness of pure being had withdrawn trom them they were just rather stale literary words. Now the poct has to work in the exiin Of pure being; he has to get back that intensity into the language, We all know thi is hand to write poet in a ate age; and we know that you have to put some strangeness, as something unexpected, into the structure of the sentence in onder to bring back vitality ino the noun. Now i's not enough t be bizarre; the strangeness in a sentence structure has ro come from the poetic gift, too. That's ‘why it's doubly hard toe a poet in alate age. Now you all have seen hundreds of poems about roses and you know in your bones ‘GeRTRUDE STEIN % that the 105¢ is not there. All those songs that sopranos sing as ncores about “T ave 4 garden! ohy what a garden. Now listen! Tm no fool, T know that in daly fife we don’e go around saying Sorisasoil @socs a. Yes, Pm no fook but I think that in that line the tse i red for the fast time in English poctry fora hun= deed years.WALLACE STEVENS Watce Stevens (472959 exploited dichotomy between hi exterior (comforbly muda Amen and the intron word the pt richly symbole and metpiyal o proguce «dy of work tat almost 4s ‘eso of envionment Hi daily routine at iepesidet of sane “Simpy in Connect apened to ivelve a tanga Dowrgeis "luce But inthe asonising baroque vosblry of Horm (1923) and the more smbalalh-carped work of it mile pia The Man wth the “Blu Guar (193), and above alin the Inte poem of Tanor to Somer (0847, paticua,"Naes"Toward Supreme Fito he reves hima 12 sleappinted print of i own ele of the agian. Cape of ‘trorinaly sel response his transcendent sje, hi he ‘ery af tne has proven secant to another contr ofthe mundane ith {he eantormative powers of mpage, Jobo Ase ‘The Neceary Ange! (98D), hr eiletion of sy iin many ways a8 string ash postr. Steven aligns himself with + Shale vison of the foe atthe ero of the iagiative modes by which we, kindy on, ne aur iver In sens, he posts poy a he mpreme clo fiom Adagia (0884-4071987) “To give a sense of the feshness or vividness of life is «vad pur= pose for posty. A didactic purpose justifies itself in che mind of {he teacher; a philosophical purpose justifies itself in the mind of the philosopher. I is not that one purpose is s justifiable as another bout that some purposes ae pure others impure. Sek those purposes that are purely the purposes ofthe pure poet, ‘The poet makes silk dresses out of worms. “The public of the poet. ‘The public of the organist is the chusch in which he improvise, ‘Meri in poets is a boring as merit in people [Authors are actors, books are theatres. [An attractive view: The aspects of eatth of interest to a post are ‘the casual one, as light or coor, images. WALLACE STEVENS « ‘Definitions ae relative, The notin of absolutes is relative Life is an afr of people not of places. But for me life is an affair drphaces and tha is the rouble (..) Literature isthe better part of life, To this t seems inevitably nec= ‘esaty to add provided life the beter part of erature “Thought is an infection. Inthe ease of certain thoughts it becomes, an epidemic. eis life that we are trying to get a in poetry. [After one as abandoned a belie in od, poetry is that essence which takes its place 3s life’s redemption. Art, broly, i the form of life or the sound or color of Fife. Con= fidered as form (inthe abstract) iti often indistinguishable from Iie tse “The poet seems to confer hi identity on the reader. I is easiest to recognise this when listening to music ~ I mean this sort of thing: the transference. ‘Accuracy of observation isthe equivalent of accuracy of thinking A poem is 2 meteor An evenings thought is like a day of clear weather ‘The los ofa language creates confason or dumibness “The collecting of poetry from one’s experience as one goes along is not the same thing as merely writing pote: (.] A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect but, ‘most likely, ofthe opposite Art involves vastly more than the sense of Beauty. Life is the reflection of Fiteratue. As life grows more terible its Hterture grows more terrible88 WALLACE STEVENS, Poetry and materia poetca are interchangeable terms Usage is everything. (Les idées sont destinées 4 dere déformées & TPusige. Reconnaice ce fait est ane preuve de désinteressement, Georges Braque, Herve No. 2 ‘The imagination wishes to be indulged ‘A new meaning isthe equivalent of a new word Poetry is not personal [1 Poetry isa means of redemption. (..] “The poem reveals itself only to the ignorant man “The relation between the poctry of experience and the poetry of rhetoric is not the same thing as the relation betwoen the poetry of realty and that of the imagination. Experience, atleast in the cease of poet of any seape, i much broader than realty “To. linge extent, the problems of poets are the problems of punters and poets must often turn to the Kterature of painting fora d= fusion of their own problems, Weather isa sense of nature, Poety is a sense [Abstraction is apart of idealism. Te is in that sense tha iti ugly ‘There are two opposites: the poetry of rhetoric and the poetry of| ‘experience. In postry at Feast dhe imagination must not detach isl fom rea. [Not all objects are equal. The vice of imag was that it did not recognise tis. “The poet must put the same degree of intentness ito his poetry as, for example, the traveler into his adventure the painter into his painting Al poetry is experimental poetry WALLACE STEVENS 9 ‘phe bare image and the image as symbol are the contrast: the jing without meaning and the image as meaning. When the image Fused to suggest something ese, itis secondary. Poetry, as an Fimagnative thing, consists of more than ies on the surface. [1 tn poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and images and rhythms with all your eapacity to love anything at all. [1] ‘What we se in the mind is a real 1 us a what we se by the eye. Poetry st be eration “The purpose of pose is to mak Hie complete in isl Poetry increases the felng for reat. “The mind isthe most powerl thing inthe world [.-] Consider L "That the whole world is material for poetry ‘That there is not a specially poste material, One reads poetry with ones nerves "The poet i the imtermestiany between people and the world in which they live and, also, between people as between themselves; but not Thetwcen people and some other world. [..] Posty isnot the same thing 3 the imation taken alone, Nothing itself token alone. Things are because of interrelations or iterations ‘The final belie isto believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know tha it sa fetion and that you heieve ini wing. All of our ideas come from the natural work: ‘Trees = umbrels. 1 Tere is nothing so offensive to a man of intellectual principle as| unprincipled thinking