Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Wallace Stevens died when I was a boy …
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Dies Natalis
A search in this journal for "Wallace Stevens died" is
suggested by a New York Times obituary this afternoon . . .
Friday, August 2, 2013
Duende for St. Wallace
(The final quote above is bogus. Stevens did write "Death is the mother
of beauty," but the "perishable" part is from a lesser poet, Billy Collins.)
For the duende of this post's title, see a dance.
The dance suggests a 1956 passage by Robert Silverberg—
"There was something in the heart of the diamond—
not the familiar brown flaw of the others, but something
of a different color, something moving and flickering.
Before my eyes, it changed and grew.
And I saw what it was. It was the form of a girl—
a woman, rather, a voluptuous, writhing nude form
in the center of the gem. Her hair was a lustrous blue-black,
her eyes a piercing ebony. She was gesturing to me,
holding out her hands, incredibly beckoning from within
the heart of the diamond.
I felt my legs go limp. She was growing larger, coming closer,
holding out her arms, beckoning, calling—
She seemed to fill the room. The diamond grew to gigantic size,
and my brain whirled and bobbed in dizzy circles.
I sensed the overpowering, wordless call."
— "Guardian of the Crystal Gate," August 1956
For similar gestures, see Nicole Kidman's dance in "The Human Stain."
Monday, July 2, 2007
Monday July 2, 2007
A figure like Ecclesiast/
Rugged and luminous,
chants in the dark/
A text that is an answer,
although obscure.
— Wallace Stevens,
"An Ordinary Evening
in New Haven"
Time and Chance
|
From 8/02
in 2005:
50 Years Ago on this date, poet Wallace Stevens died. Memorial: at the Wallace Stevens Concordance, enter center. |
Result:
The Man with the Blue Guitar | |
---|---|
line 150 (xiii.6): | The heraldic center of the world |
Human Arrangement | |
line 13: | The center of transformations that |
This Solitude of Cataracts | |
line 18: | Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time. |
A Primitive Like an Orb | |
line 1 (i.1): | The essential poem at the center of things, |
line 87 (xi.7): | At the center on the horizon, concentrum, grave |
Reply to Papini | |
line 33 (ii.15): | And final. This is the center. The poet is |
Study of Images II | |
line 7: | As if the center of images had its |
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven | |
line 291 (xvii.3): | It fails. The strength at the center is serious. |
line 371 (xxi.11): | At the center, the object of the will, this place, |
Things of August | |
line 154 (ix.18): | At the center of the unintelligible, |
The Hermitage at the Center | |
Title: | The Hermitage at the Center |
Owl's Clover, The Old Woman and the Statue (OP) | |
line 13 (ii.9): | At the center of the mass, the haunches low, |
The Sail of Ulysses (OP) | |
line 50 (iv.6): | The center of the self, the self |
Someone Puts a Pineapple Together (NA) | |
line 6 (i.6): | The angel at the center of this rind, |
Of Ideal Time and Choice (NA) | |
line 29: | At last, the center of resemblance, found |
line 32: | Stand at the center of ideal time, |
For a text on today's
mid-day number, see
Tuesday, August 2, 2005
Tuesday August 2, 2005
on this date, poet
Wallace Stevens died.
Memorial: at the
Wallace Stevens
Concordance,
enter center.