On Misunderstanding Stevens (Essay: c. & c. welcomed)
Bill Palmer
I'll simply refer to as "Owlie". Owlie had some excellent qualities,
but he was a bit intimidating in a discussion. He invariably had
studied harder, read more, and in general absorbed far greater
knowledge than everyone else in the group combined.
He wasn't shy about letting people know it, either. I suppose that
in his obnoxious way, Owlie felt he was performing a valuable ser-
vice by acting as "ballast" and preventing his pals from being
carried away by the wild notions their relatively untutored minds
regularly fell prey to.
Anyway, at some point during my tenth grade, I ran across Wallace
Stevens' poetry. I was immediately caught and held by an aston-
ishing language usage I had never before experienced. Of course,
I wanted to share my enthusiasm with my friends.
"Owlie, listen to this!" I exclaimed, standing with book in hand in
the section of the school hallway where Owlie, myself, and some
others would congregate after lunch. Without waiting for permission,
I began to read aloud, very fast as the rhythm of the poem seemed to
demand--
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in Caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
--from "Bantams in the Pine Woods"
I distinctly recall speaking loud enough to cause eyerybody in that
part of the hallway to turn and stare when I said "Halt!" That was
all Owlie needed.
"No, no, no, you HALT!" he commanded, and his "halt" was consider-
ably louder even than mine. He was unimpressed with the verse, and
he seemed immediately to sense that I was on the verge of being
swept along by another dangerous storm of passion--one no doubt
rooted in some misunderstanding, as usual.
"Tsk, tsk, my good man." (Owlie always spoke as if he were several
years older than everyone else.) "You probably have not an inkling
of what that poet is saying. How can you be naive enough to claim
for an instant you are enjoying his verse? Here, let me see that--"
He snatched the book from my fingers and began to thumb through it
rapidly.
"Ah...HA! I suspected as much. Why my friend, you no more fathom
Wallace Stevens than you comprehend the hieroglyphics on King
Tut's tomb". (Owlie's words were pregnant with meaning--HE in fact
HAD learned hieroglyphics on his own by studying library books.)
He continued. "Clearly you are getting wrapped up in something
you have no comprehension of and which can only result in your
EMBARRASSMENT!" He shouted the last word. In those vanished
days, "embarrassment" had a terrifying resonance.
Owlie went on in a gentler--but equally patronizing--voice.
"Look, you want to get acquainted with Stevens, fine." [Re-
member, this was coming from someone who had probably never
heard of Stevens until I read the lines aloud.] "Go to
the library and grab a few books on him. Find out what he
is REALLY saying. Study and think deeply. Perhaps--just
perhaps--then you can truly come to know this poetry, rather
than deluding yourself that you like something you in no way
understand."
Thankfully, I didn't take all this too seriously. (Like others
in our crowd, I found great pride in NOT following Owlie's gra-
tuitous advice--even when it was good.) I continued to enjoy
Stevens. Eventually--after I was out of high school--I even
read several books on him, a couple of which set forth some
fascinating ideas on his poetics.
But there was nothing I learned from any of those volumes which
told me a person of ordinary reading ability--and a love of
poetry--couldn't find huge rewards in becoming familiar with
Stevens' work, despite knowing little or nothing about the man
or his aesthetic.
As I think about this, it occurs to me that enjoying Stevens can
be very much like looking at an abstract painting: Who is to say
one must know exactly what the artist "meant" by every brush
stroke, and in fact who is to have the final word on the "true
meaning" of the work itself? The picture either works or it
doesn't. Likewise, when hearing a superb jazz piece, who is to
decree that a listener must know precisely what the musicians
"mean" by every identifiable chord? The meaning is felt.
The "Owlies" of the world to the contrary, Stevens' poems exist
to be read and enjoyed. However satisfying it may be to study
the infludences on, and the intentions of, any great poet--the
fact is that one can easily fall in love with Stevens' lines
without perusing as much as a single "critical essay".
Study though they might for a lifetime, it is the Owlies who
will never understand the great command,
Poet, be seated at the piano,
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation.
--from "Mozart, 1935"
(And now, academes of the Internet, shall we spend several weeks
discussing the real meaning of "hoo-hoo-hoo", or would it perhaps
be more edifying to call an electronic symposium to debate the
true significance of "shoo-shoo-shoo"? ;-)
--and will never be able to see that,
Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
--from "The Bird with the Coppery,
Keen Claws"
--and of course can NEVER, EVER discern how
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor...
--from "Of Mere Being"
---------------------------------------------
All poetry quotes from Wallace Stevens.
Essay by "The Palmer at the End of the Mind"
Tim Love
"Wallace Stevens and Modern Art" by Glen MacLeod (Yale U.P., 1993)
looks at the 2-way influences between Stevens and the Art World.
He had contacts who were collectors and critics. He liked reading
catalogs and art magazines. He's quite often considered to be
cubist (multiple overlapping viewpoints), surrealist (though he
disliked Dali's showmanship and once said that "the essential
fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering") and
abstract. His views on abstraction changed through his career.
Though "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" contains a "It must be
abstract" subtitle, he was never a word-dripper. He was interested
in Mondrian (he alludes to Mondrian's essays, and Stevens traced
his Dutch ancestry back - genetically and artistically) for its
purity.
All that said, I don't really read Stevens in the way I look at
Abstract art. Maybe Larry Rivers is a closer match?
Philip Nikolayev
same breath - that you don't need any lit-crit analysis to help you
appreciate Stevens, and that you don't need to understand everything
about Stevens to be able to fall in love with Stevens. Quite apart
from what seems to me the naivete' of your beliefs about how good
critics work, I wonder if respect for the person enters at all into
your notion of love. Is your love of Stevens respectful? Has it any
regard for Stevens's intentions? Does it encourage you to explore
things further? Where do you stop? When do you decide that you don't
want to understand anything new about the stuff (while still feeling
that you're in love with it). Suppose Stevens were grateful to you for
your enthusiasm, but told you that he'd be even more grateful if you
went beyond hedonistic reading and tried to figure out his ideas and
the nuances of his method? Suppose he also pointed out that his
intentions mattered to him and to his poetry, and that you
misunderstand his work in claiming that it's like abstract painting?
Would you then call him an academic and dismiss his opinion as
irrelevant to his own poetry? You could do this, of course, since
you've paid for the books, and what you make of the stuff therein or
how you use it is up to you. But it's quite another matter to hold
oneself up narcissistically as an example of correct readership for
the only reason that you supposedly "love" Stevens, and to suggest
that those who try to figure out the details and don't subscribe to
your ideal method of appreciation are in fact a caste of lifeless
academics who'll never have a clue. And to say that Stevens is good
only because he "works for you" is, well, disrespectful to Stevens.
There, I've tried to say this as politely as possible, even though I
don't really mean anything nice.
You know, there is one doctrine that has emerged as a kind of new
orthodoxy in academic criticism during the last couple of years; it's
popularly known as "the death of the author." The idea is: no more of
this business of what the author wanted to say; the only thing that
matters is what I and my critical buddies make of it. Fuck this shit.
Philip Nikolayev