  Poetry
This week: Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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The Wind Shifts
By Wallace Stevens
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.
The Idea of Order at Key West
by Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard.
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
On October 2, 1879 Wallace Stevens was born in Pennsylvania. Stevens went to Harvard from 1807 to 1900, but did not graduate. Stevens then earned a Law degree from New York Law School in 1903 and was admitted to the New York bar in 1904. That same year he met Elsie Kachel, whom he married five years later. Elsie and Wallace had one daughter Holly Bight.
Stevens started writing while he was attending Harvard. He admitted poem after poem to the "Harvard Advocate", but he woul.d not become a published poet until many years later. In 1915, at the age of 36, Stevens first work was published. After that publication his poetry was frequently published in the Poetry, Chicago. Stevens first book, Harmonium was published in 1923. The reviews for his book upset Stevens and he became discouraged he wrote nothing for several years. In 1931 he published his second edition of Harmonium, adding only eight new poems.
Stevens was a successful business man. He was hired as a bonding lawyer for an insurance company and quickly moved to vice-president. In 1916 His company merged and Stevens joined the home office. After years of hard work Stevens became the vice-president of Hartford Accident and Indemnity in 1934. During these years Stevens did not attempt to write. It wasn't until the 1930's that he started publishing his work and only in limited edition.
At the age of sixty, Stevens seemed to bring everything together and finally perfected what he thought his poetry should have been all along. "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" published in 1942, "Esthetique du Mal" published in 1945, "The Auroras of Autumn" in 1947 and "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" published in 1950. By the age of seventy he began writing poetry about old age. In 1954 at the age of seventy-five Stevens finally got widespread recognition as a poet for the publication of his Collected Poems. On August 2, 1955, Wallace Stevens died at the age of seventy-six.
The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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Poetry: November 09, 2005 Issue [#698]
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