Wallace Stevens- Metamorphosis
Rob Stumpf
Hi- trying to decipher the following Wallace Stevens
poem-- I think I have the gist of it, but there are
a few references/symbols that are puzzling me.
If anyone has any ideas, please post them. Thanks.
Metamorphosis
Yillow, yillow, yillow
Old worm, my pretty quirk
How the wind spells out
Sep-tem-ber.
Summer is in bones
Cock-robin's at Caracas
Make o Make O Make o
Oto-otu-bre.
And the rude leaves fall.
The rain falls. The sky
Falls and lies with the worms.
The street lamps
Are those that have been hanged.
Dangling in an illogical
To and to and fro
Fro Niz-nil-imbo.
Dom Casual
Rob Stumpf wrote:
>
> Hi- trying to decipher the following Wallace Stevens
> poem-- I think I have the gist of it, but there are
> a few references/symbols that are puzzling me.
> If anyone has any ideas, please post them. Thanks.
Ideas about what? Those references and symbols? What makes you think
Wallace Stevens uses references and symbols? You just want us to write
your damn term paper for you, don't you?
--
Dom Casual
Critic-at-Large
loa
On Mon, 5 May 1997, Rob Stumpf wrote:
> Hi- trying to decipher the following Wallace Stevens
> poem-- I think I have the gist of it, but there are
> a few references/symbols that are puzzling me.
> If anyone has any ideas, please post them. Thanks.
If I recall correctly, W.S. was a surrealist
writer. Good luck interpreting him: it's like
asking Dali why the train is coming out of the
fireplace. So you have the gist of it, eh?
No offense, but I doubt it. Not to knock W.S. --
"13 Ways" is one of my favorite poems.
--loa--
"Mr Dali, why are those clocks melting?"
----------------------------------------------------------------
loa lightquencher (sm...@cougarnet.byu.edu)
Angel of Light, co-editrix of DWLW
Loa's Lair: www.byu.edu/~smitl/lair1.htm
To Be Like Phaeton/And Drive The Trophy-Sun! -S.V.Benet
----------------------------------------------------------------
Marek Lugowski
In article <Pine.OSF.3.95.970507...@acs2.byu.edu>,
loa <sm...@cougarnet.byu.edu> wrote:
>On Mon, 5 May 1997, Rob Stumpf wrote:
>> Hi- trying to decipher the following Wallace Stevens
>> poem-- I think I have the gist of it, but there are
>> a few references/symbols that are puzzling me.
>> If anyone has any ideas, please post them. Thanks.
>
> If I recall correctly, W.S. was a surrealist
> writer. Good luck interpreting him: it's like
> asking Dali why the train is coming out of the
> fireplace. So you have the gist of it, eh?
> No offense, but I doubt it. Not to knock W.S. --
> "13 Ways" is one of my favorite poems.
>
>--loa--
>"Mr Dali, why are those clocks melting?"
Laura, Rene Magrite painted the train... And Dali was very happy to
discuss surrealism as well as his paintings. Why do you think that
being a surrealist renders one ineffable? In case of Dali it was just
the oppoist. The man bubbled with verbal semiosis...
-- Marek
Shooshie
In article <5kqnun$l...@eve.enteract.com>, ma...@enteract.com (Marek
Lugowski) wrote:
Hehehe... not that it ever helped anyone "understand" surrealism. Dali was
involved in the promotion of his own art, and was one of the founders of
the surrealist "school of thought" that 'escaped' dadaism. Like an art
dealer, he was expert in keeping the patter interesting for the
uninitiated. Dali knew the value of his eccentricities. He even paid for
everything with a check in hopes that his signature would be worth more to
someone than the check, and perhaps they wouldn't cash it - at least, so
the story goes.
The bottom line is that great art, like great poetry, is great for reasons
that transcend the explanation. Otherwise, we could probably just read the
explanation and ignore the art. If taste could be packaged and sold,
everyone would have million dollar art collections, and we'd all be great
poets; at least, those who could afford it would be.
Shooshie
smolens
On Wed, 7 May 1997, loa wrote:
>
> If I recall correctly, W.S. was a surrealist
> writer. Good luck interpreting him: it's like
> asking Dali why the train is coming out of the
> fireplace. So you have the gist of it, eh?
> No offense, but I doubt it. Not to knock W.S. --
> "13 Ways" is one of my favorite poems.
>
> --loa--
> "Mr Dali, why are those clocks melting?"
>
wallace stevens was not a surrealist; he was a stevensist.
no offense, but those clocks are melting because, supposedly,
time melts everything.
jrs.
Marek Lugowski
> wallace stevens was not a surrealist; he was a stevensist.
>
> no offense, but those clocks are melting because, supposedly,
> time melts everything.
no defence, this. the clocks are melting for no such common-sensical
default metaphor. remember, this is subversion, not affirmation,
daily or otherwise. the clocks are melting like cheese in the
microwave because-unbecause the persistence of memory transmutes time.
Joni Mitchell understood, decades later, albeit not at all
surrealistically, with a simple human, hand-scented quilt of an old
sentimental song stitched to her -- and our -- pressing hunger:
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Down at the Chinese Cafe
We'd be dreaming on our dimes
We'd be playing --
"Oh my love, my darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me"
-- Joni Mitchell,
from _Wild Things Run Fast_
-- Marek
smolens
On 8 May 1997, pussy-clamp wrote:
>
>
i'm saying, james r. fucking smolens is saying this:
first of all, you cheeseball fuck, don't transmute my quote by not
attributing it to me. you can't ignore me forever, pussy-clamp.
and you still have yet to apologize to me, for petty crimes
committed against my state of employment. you could have every
clock in the world melt, i'll never forget what you did, unless an
apology does the melting.
i also said this, a little earlier today:
> wallace stevens was not a surrealist; he was a stevensist.
>
> no offense, but those clocks are melting because, supposedly,
> time melts everything.
the pussy-clamp says this:
>
> no defence, this. the clocks are melting for no such common-sensical
> default metaphor. remember, this is subversion, not affirmation,
> daily or otherwise. the clocks are melting like cheese in the
> microwave because-unbecause the persistence of memory transmutes time.
>
for me, subversion is an affirmation of the surface version--
just like ying is an affirmation of the yang. and daily
has no otherwise. habit is the golden rule: no matter where
i may be stationed, there are nothing but days and days ahead
of me.
the clocks are not melting like cheese in a microwave; dali never
had a fucking microwave. i understand you find it hard to
agree with any kind of common-sense, because you have none.
or perhaps you have just bought the clam that dali was
re-shelling. i have not read any of dali's interpretations or
defenses of himself. it has rarely interested me to see others
talk about art, even if it's the artist himself talking. however,
i will grant you a bit of your subversion romance: i could have
also said that dali may have thought of time as a melting, flimsy
mechanism of organized society. there are many things i could
have said. they all would be common sense, but you pride yourself
on having some kind of uncommon sense, a sense owned and operated
by you, and not for any fucking profit neither. however, it shows
nowhere-- not in your overly-journalistic tripe of a poetry, not
in your bad breath press, your ask-a-nazi diary, and certainly not
in your insipid, tarpon dialogues with those of lesser fishing
experience.
here is a bottom line, besides the one about you being a
pussy-clamp: i could talk about fucking melting clocks
all fucking day, but i don't have the fucking time.
i only exist to catch up to my memory, which is
simultaneously melting as it runs.
could dali paint a melting memory? no. and that is why we have
the clocks.
incidentally, couldn't the persistence of time transmute memory?
might not dali wanted the clocks to melt to preserve his memories,
to have them always as they are, not to forget anything: art
has no substance without memory. with an absolutely perfect
memory, one not jaded by time, a person could become the most
phenomenal artist the world has seen.. perhaps this is why
savants and autistic folks can be such talented artists; they're
memories may not been affected adversely by their condition.
pussy-clamp included this as his best offense in a redirection:
> Joni Mitchell understood, decades later, albeit not at all
> surrealistically, with a simple human, hand-scented quilt of an old
> sentimental song stitched to her -- and our -- pressing hunger:
>
ms. mitchell's lyric is lovely, and may or may not have something
to do with melting clocks. a beautiful connection from a mind
full of uncommon sense, and faultless metaphors.
> Nothing lasts for long
> Nothing lasts for long
> Nothing lasts for long
> Down at the Chinese Cafe
> We'd be dreaming on our dimes
> We'd be playing --
> "Oh my love, my darling
> I've hungered for your touch
> A long lonely time
> And time goes by so slowly
> And time can do so much
> Are you still mine?
> I need your love
> I need your love
> God speed your love to me"
>
> -- Joni Mitchell,
> from _Wild Things Run Fast_
and remember, my little pussy-clamp: it's not proper to
disrespect a real dickhead, which is what you've done
since jumpstreet.
jrs.
Paris Flammonde
Marek Lugowski wrote:
>
> yu.edu> wrote:
> >On Mon, 5 May 1997, Rob Stumpf wrote:
> >> Hi- trying to decipher the following Wallace Stevens
> >> poem-- I think I have the gist of it, but there are
> >> a few references/symbols that are puzzling me.
> >> If anyone has any ideas, please post them. Thanks.
> >
> > writer. Good luc
> >
> >
> >ANALYSIS: Wallace Stevens, by no stretch of the imagination could he be
called a surealistic poet. His only arcame technique might be designated
as cryptographic. He came from an entirely different school and
psychology of poetry, to say the very least. This might be clarified
for those who know nothing of him by remarking that after WW I he had a
play produced at the Provincetown Playhouse and that from 1916 until his
death in 1955 he worked as a vice president of the Hartford Accident and
Indemnity Company. Hardly a left-bank Parisienne radical! The
Surrealistic school was of an origin as different as possible, coming
out of Andre Breton "Manifesto" (1924), and were virtually all French,
with a few other Eruopeans, e.g.Louis Aragon, Antonin Arttaud, Paul
Eulard, Benjamin Peret, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, and others.
Apollinaire, according to Breton, coined the word in the first part of
the century, but the latter made it part of the patios of the painting
world, and then of French poets. Breton and Soupault wrote the first
surrealistic text in a common effort at spontaneous writing, published
in "Litterature" in 1919.
For a while it functioned concurrently with dadaism, then Breton
and followers left the more nonsensical mode in around 1922.
If anyone could possibly have been called a "surrealist" in
Americans letters it would have been e. e. cummings--who, actually, was
nothing of the sort. It is only the typography which might mislead the
uninitiated. Part of the problem of individuals unschooled in the
schools of poetry, as with other arts, is that they tend to highly
personalize interpretations of works, they give THEIR reading of the
meaning, rather than try to plumb the poet's, which, often, is not
translatable, which must be taken as is. (O, how small the amount of
critical scholarship discernible on this medium.) To a great extent this
is ture with "Metamorphosis." It is patently evident that it is a very
personal language being employed, in part nonce words and syllables,
another portion abstruse imagery (but direct if one can apprhend it, not
surrealistic)
My reading, for what it is worth, is "yellow, yellow, yellow
of something like a a caterpiller spoken in dialect "yillow, yillow,
yillow," a serpentine set of sounds depicting the squiggly motion of the
creature, reenforced by the word "quirk." Then, double entendre "wind"
as air in motion, but, also, as circumlocution reemphasized. And the
coming of autumn--"September."
Now, into fall, the trees begin to be denuded thus "Summer is in
bones" and birds have flown south ("cock-robin's at Caracas"--and where
has poor robin gone, now?)."Make o," repeated suggests the slow comming
of the next season; "Oto" implies hearing it as well as seeing "Otu bre"
(which may have an "ought you" value, but I haven't deciphered it) for
October.) The next stanza depictis the furry little creatures populating
the sidewalk, both wet and soggy, patterned beneath the glow of the
lamps, which swing in the rain and wind in irregular movements "to and
fro."
The final line is more difficult, but I read it as an anagram of
"Frozen in limbo."
Paris Flammonde 5/8/97
Jonathan Waterbury
In article
<Pine.PMDF.3.95.97050...@oscar.allegheny.edu>, smolens
<smo...@allegheny.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 May 1997, loa wrote:
>
> >
> > If I recall correctly, W.S. was a surrealist
> > writer. Good luck interpreting him: it's like
> > asking Dali why the train is coming out of the
> > fireplace. So you have the gist of it, eh?
> > No offense, but I doubt it. Not to knock W.S. --
> > "13 Ways" is one of my favorite poems.
> >
> > --loa--
> > "Mr Dali, why are those clocks melting?"
> >
>
>
> wallace stevens was not a surrealist; he was a stevensist.
>
> no offense, but those clocks are melting because, supposedly,
> time melts everything.
>
> jrs.
Um, not to get *too* into the bullshit here but in order to point
something out... The train coming out of the fireplace was probably in
Brussels or Lessines, Belgium. The painting is by Rene Magritte, who was
certainly a surrealist but not the same painter who created "Persistance
of Memory," which is the melting clock painting y'all are going on about.
--
IMHO as usual and as always,
Cheers,
Jonathan
hint: remove n#2 through m
Marek Lugowski
In article <3371C4...@noln.com>, Paris Flammonde <ta...@noln.com> wrote:
>Marek Lugowski wrote:
...after which
a) You cite nothing that I wrote.
b) I did not write anything on the topic of Stevens.
c) You sent this to me, in addition to posting it.
I submit, icily, that if the above vector sum represents your powers
of discernment, then I question your fidelity as explicator or Stevens.
-- Marek
P.s. Why DO you quote yourself, sometimes twice, sometimes thrice on rap?
Would you like me to help you discern amongsts your software buttons,
you know, the strange encoding that is your keyboard?
>> yu.edu> wrote:
>> >On Mon, 5 May 1997, Rob Stumpf wrote:
>> >> Hi- trying to decipher the following Wallace Stevens
>> >> poem-- I think I have the gist of it, but there are
>> >> a few references/symbols that are puzzling me.
>> >> If anyone has any ideas, please post them. Thanks.
>> >
>> > If I recall correctly, W.S. was a surrealist
loa
Jonathan Waterbury, you smart person, you may smack me, I shoulda knowed
that was a Magritte.
I still submit to "smolens" (jrs?? i don't know the real name) that
unless you had a conversation with Dali about the subject of "The
Persistence of Memory," well forget it because you haven't any idea
why he painted it. Though it is certainly your prerogative to guess.
I haven't any idea what a "Stevensist" is, but Stevens' psychological
imagery and some emphasis on dreams was what made me think of him
as a surrealist. Maybe I just have him mixed up with the painting
movement. And so I submit the same argument to any person attempting
to analyze W.S. -- he's dead. You can't ask him about it. So guess
if you must but I don't think you'll ever get to the bottom of him.
--loa--
Sonya
Hey guys, im back..write loadsa poems for me..:)
___
(__
__)()|\|\/(|
/
___
/ \_
| ' /
/ |
/ / | <--Good Luck Birdy
/__/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /////
| |
^ ^
Callaghan
Glad you're back, Sonya! .. And your little bird too!
Love, Bettina :)
Sonya <uf...@ciao.org> wrote in article
<Pine.SUN.3.91-CIAO.970...@ciao.org>...