In 1909, Wallace Stevens wrote letters expressing his enthusiasm for a German art exhibition primarily in the realist and impressionist traditions, though there was some symbolist representation. Although Stevens seems not to have mentioned the artworks nor the artists again, this early attraction was reflective of enduring aspects of his poetry, particularly the impressionist aspects of his style.
The blue freak rides in his blue train for days, zippingunzipping, he howls at how the freakish earthkeeps warm, thinking the landis a staircase, and through its balustrade, the towns appearlike shy children threading themselves, thingsthe blue trees remember. He goes from purple Mainewhere rocks grow in blue soil, and turquoise is the deepabstraction of lobster, where a shroud of black quartzis the painless face of midnight, and daylight is animalstillness, the unsubduable watchedness like the bluefreak himself. Embalmed blueof the osprey, and the shore is a necklaceburied in the ocean's skin. He wonders how othersevade his freakish fate, seeing inside windowswhere the blue wolf twists himself into rope, and blue fatherknots his home, a living shapebereft of living geometry. Blue freak will notwrest a voice from that blue howling, will not livein that muscling cordage. The train unseamspurple, an abducted blue of translucence, andblue mistress awaits. [End Page 110]
Daniel Schwartz Brookline, Massachusetts Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press ...
First there was the delicate snakeskin,like tissue paper, a foot long and ghostly white.Touch it and it crumbles, a tokenof a potential deadly resurrection,fittingly done in moonlight,a warning sign of things to come.
A sudden revelation in the morning's grassthe snakeskin betrays the snake,quiet, private, impossible to detect,this hidden cold-blooded arrow of deathtakes its victim's last breath, a gaspin the terrible silence.
And just before the sacrament of the strikebeneath the now unbalanced clouds,one hears "the whole desolate, final reality"of a hiss beneath the shroud.Then quickly, quickly the venom worksand the world, ineffable, spins right again. [End Page 106]
Karen Petersen Santa Fe, New Mexico Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press ...
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