Wallace Stevens Quotes
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So that's life, then: things are they are? It picks its way on the blue guitar. A million people on one string? And all their manner in the thing, And all their manner, right and wrong, And all their manner, weak and strong? And that's life, then: things as they are, This buzzing of the blue guitar.
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The fluctuations of certainty, the change Of degrees of perception in the scholar’s dark.
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A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect but, most likely, of the opposite.
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He tries by a peculiar speech to speak The peculiar potency of the general
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If to serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are, Say that it is the serenade Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
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We agree in principle. That's clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began.
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I am the angel of reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.
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Without a name and nothing to be desired, If only imagined but imagined well.
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Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry, Of the torches wisping in the underground, Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light. There are no shadows in our sun, Day is desire and night is sleep. There are no shadows anywhere. The earth, for us, is flat and bare. There are no shadows.
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Is it he or is it I that experience this?
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A few things for themselves, Florida, venereal soil, Disclose to the lover.
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Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a village.
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The boots of the men clump On the boards of the bridge. The first white wall of the village Rises through fruit-trees. Of what was it I was thinking? So the meaning escapes.
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Behold The approach of him whom none believes, Whom all believe that all believe, A pagan in a varnished car.