Studies in Major Literary Authors Edited by William E Cain Professor of English Wellesley College A Routledge Series Studies in Major Literary Authors William E Cain, General Editor D.H Lawrence’s Border Crossing Colonialism in His Travel Writings and “Leadership” Novels Eunyoung Oh Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology Kenneth R Cervelli Sports, Narrative, and Nation in the Fiction of F Scott Fitzgerald Jarom Lyle McDonald Shelley’s Intellectual System and its Epicurean Background Michael A Vicario Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer Culture in the Writings of Oscar Wilde Paul L Fortunato Milton’s Uncertain Eden Understanding Place in Paradise Lost Andrew Mattison Henry Miller and Religion Thomas Nesbit The Magic Lantern Representation of the Double in Dickens Maria Cristina Paganoni Paul Auster’s Postmodernity Brendan Martin Editing Emily Dickinson The Production of an Author Lena Christensen Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism John Cant Our Scene is London Ben Jonson’s City and the Space of the Author James D Mardock Poetic Language and Political Engagement in the Poetry of Keats Jack Siler Politics and Aesthetics in The Diary of Virginia Woolf Joanne Campbell Tidwell Homosexuality in the Life and Work of Joseph Conrad Love Between the Lines Richard J Ruppel Shakespeare in the Victorian Periodicals Kathryn Prince The Environmental Unconscious in the Fiction of Don DeLillo Elise A Martucci Shakespeare and the Economic Imperative “What’s aught but as ’tis valued?” Peter F Grav James Merrill Knowing Innocence Reena Sastri Wallace Stevens and the Realities of Poetic Language Stefan Holander Yeats and Theosophy Ken Monteith Pynchon and the Political Samuel Thomas Wallace Stevens and the Realities of Poetic Language Stefan Holander New York London First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008 “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Holander, Stefan, 1971– Wallace Stevens and the realities of poetic language / by Stefan Holander p cm — (Studies in major literary authors) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-0-415-95596-6 — ISBN 978-0-203-92786-1 (e-book) Stevens, Wallace, 1879–1955—Criticism and interpretation I Title PS3537.T4753Z664 2008 811'.52—dc22 ISBN 0-203-92786-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-95596-3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-92786-9 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-95596-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-92786-1 (ebk) 2007044404 For Guro Contents Abbreviations ix Permissions xi Acknowledgments Introduction xiii Chapter One Stevens’ Closures 27 Chapter Two Motion and Voice 72 Chapter Three Rejections: Poetry Against Poetry 108 Chapter Four Toward a New Aesthetics: Farewell to Florida 149 Conclusion 173 Notes 179 Bibliography 219 General Index 229 Index of Poems and Other Texts by Wallace Stevens 233 vii Abbreviations WORKS BY WALLACE STEVENS CP The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1954 CPP Collected Poetry and Prose Ed Kermode, Frank and Joan Richardson New York: The Library of America, 1997 NA The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination London: Faber & Faber, 1984 L The Collected Letters of Wallace Stevens Ed Holly Stevens Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 OP Opus Posthumous Revised, Enlarged and Corrected Edition Ed Milton J Bates New York: Vintage Books, 1990 ix 220 Bibliography Benamou, Michel Wallace Stevens and the Symbolist Imagination Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972 Benjamin, Walter “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations London: Fontana Press, 1992 211–44 Berman, Marshall All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982 Blasing, Mutlu Konuk American Poetry: The Rhetoric of Its Forms New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987 Bloom, Harold Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977 Booker, M Keith “‘A War between the Mind and Sky’: Bakhtin and Poetry, Stevens and Politics.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 14.1 (Spring 1990): 71–85 Borroff, Marie Language and the Poet: Verbal Artistry in Frost, Stevens, and Moore Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979 Bové, Paul A Destructive Poetics: Heidegger and Modern American Poetry New York: Columbia University Press, 1980 Bowie, Andrew From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory New York: Routledge, 1997 Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught Stevens and Simile: A Theory of Language Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986 ——— The Violence Within/the Violence Without: Wallace Stevens and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Poetics Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2003 Brooker Jewel, Spears “To Murder and Create: Ethics and Aesthetics in Levinas, Pound and Eliot,” Rethinking Modernism Ed Marianne Thormählen Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003 55–76 Bruns, Gerald L “Stevens without Epistemology.” Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism Ed Albert Gelpi Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985 24–40 Burke, Kenneth A Grammar of Motives Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969 ——— The Philosophy of Literary Form New York: Vintage Books, 1957 Burnshaw, Stanley “Reflections on Wallace Stevens.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 13.2 (Fall 1989): 122–26 ——— “Turmoil in the Middle Ground.” Wallace Stevens: The Critical Heritage New Masses 17, (October 1, 1935) Ed Charles Doyle London: Routledge, 1985 137–40 Buttel, Robert “Wallace Stevens at Harvard: Some Origins of His Theme and Style.” The Act of the Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens Ed Roy Harvey Miller Pearce, J.Hillis Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965 29–57 Campbell, P Michael, and John Dolan “Teaching Stevens’s Poetry through Rhetorical Structure.” Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays Eds N Serio John and B J Leggett Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994 119–28 Bibliography 221 Clark, Timothy Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot: Sources of Derrida’s Notion and Practice of Literature Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Cleghorn, Angus Wallace Stevens’ Poetics: The Neglected Rhetoric London: Palgrave, 2000 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Oxford Authors Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 Collins, Christopher Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation, and the Roots of Iconophobia University Park: Penssylvania State University Press, 1991 Cook, Eleanor Poetry, Word-Play, and Word-War in Wallace Stevens Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988 ——— “Wallace Stevens and the King James Bible.” Essays in Criticism: A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism 41.3 (1991): 240–52 Corradi Fiumara, Gemma The Metaphoric Process: Connections between Language and Life London: Routledge, 1995 Costello, Bonnie “Effects of Analogy: Wallace Stevens and Painting.” Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism Ed Albert Gelpi Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985 65–85 Cunningham, J V “Tradition and Modernity: Wallace Stevens.” Selected Essays Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1976 225–43 Cureton, Richard D Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse London: Longman, 1992 Cushman, Stephen Fictions of Form in American Poetry Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993 De Man, Paul Blindness & Insight : Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism New York: Oxford University Press, 1971 Depieven, Leonard The Difficulties of Modernism New York and London: Routledge, 2003 Derrida, Jacques “Che cos’e la poesia?.” A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds New York: Harvester Weatsheaf, 1991: pp 221–42 ——— Margins of Philosophy Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 ——— Of Grammatology Ed and transl Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 ——— Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International New York: Routledge, 1994 ——— Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979 Derrida, Jacques, and Derek Attridge Acts of Literature New York: Routledge, 1992 Dickie, Margaret “Collections of Sound in Stevens.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 15.2 (Fall 1991): 133–43 Dickinson, Emily The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson London: Faber & Faber, 1975 Dougherty, Adelyn “Structures of Sound in Wallace Stevens’ ‘Farewell to Florida.’” Texas Studies in Literature and Language: A Journal of the Humanities, Austin (1975): 16, 755–64 Easthope, Antony Poetry as Discourse New Accents London: Methuen, 1983 222 Bibliography Eeckhout, Bart Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2002 Eliot, T S Collected Poems 1909–1935 London: Faber & Faber, 1954 ——— On Poetry and Poets New York: Farrar Straus & Cudahy, 1957 ——— To Criticize the Critic New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1978 Endo, Paul “Stevens and the Two Sublimes.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 19.1 (Spring 1995): 36–50 Erlich, Victor Russian Formalism: History—Doctrine New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981 Eysteinsson, Astradur The Concept of Modernism Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990 Filreis, Alan Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties & Literary Radicalism Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ——— Wallace Stevens and the Actual World Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991 Filreis, Alan, and Harvey Teres “An Interview with Stanley Burnshaw.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 13.2 (1989): 109–21 Finch, Annie The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993 ——— “A Review of Rethinking Meter: A New Approach to the Verse Line by Alan Holder.” Versification: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literary Prosody 2.3 March, 1998 (1998): 298–302 Fisher, Barbara M “Ambiguous Birds and Quizzical Messengers: Parody as Stevens’ Double Agent.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 9.1 (Spring 1985): 3–13 ——— “‘The Mind Dances with Itself ’: Choreographic Idiom in Williams and Stevens.” William Carlos Williams Review 18.2 (1992): 13–23 Frost, Robert Selected Poems London: Penguin, 1973 Frye, Northrop Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye New York: Atheneum, 1968 ——— “The Realistic Oriole: A Study of Wallace Stevens.” Wallace Stevens: A Collection of Critical Essays Ed Marie Borroff Eaglewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall, 1963 161–76 Gelpi, Albert “Stevens and Williams: The Epistemology of Modernism.” Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism Ed Albert Gelpi Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 3–23 Gerber, Natalie “‘A Funny Foreigner of Meek Address’: Stevens and English as a Foreign Language.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 25:2 (Fall 2001): 211–19 ——— “Stevens’ Prosody: Meaningful Rhythms.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 29.1 (Spring 2005): 178–87 Halliday, Mark Stevens and the Interpersonal Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991 Bibliography 223 Hamburger, Michael “Absolute Poetry and Absolute Politics.” Poetry and Politics Ed Richard Jones New York: William Morrow and Co., 1985 85–116 Haney, David P “Aesthetics and Ethics in Gadamer, Lévinas and Romanticism: Problems of Phronesis and Techné.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 114 January (1999): 31–45 Harrington, Joseph “The Modernist as Liberal: Wallace Stevens and the Poetics of Private Insurance.” Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U.S Poetics Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan, 2002 Hass, Robert Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry New York: Ecco Press, 1984 Henley, William Ernest Poems Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1993 Hoerner, Fred “Gratification and Its Discontents: The Politics of Stevens’ Chastening Aesthetics.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 18.1 (Spring 1994): 81–105 Holander, Stefan “Between Categories: Modernist and Postmodernist Appropriations of Wallace Stevens.” Rethinking Modernism Ed Marianne Thormählen Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 221–38 Hollander, John “The Sound of the Music of Music and Sound.” Wallace Stevens: A Celebration Ed Frank Dogget and Robert Buttell Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980 235–55 ——— Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985 Irigaray, Luce “The Sex Which Is Not One.” From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology Ed Lawrence Cahoone London: Blackwell, 1996 461–8 Jakobson, Roman “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” Style in Language (Papers Presented at the Conference on Style Held at Indiana University, 1958) Ed Thomas A Sebeok New York: Wiley, 1960 350–77 Jameson, Fredric The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971–1986 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988 ——— The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972 ——— “Wallace Stevens.” New Orleans Review 11.1 (1984): 10–19 Johnson, Kent “Prosody and the Outside: Some Notes on Rakosi and Stevens.” Carl Rakosi: Man and Poet Ed Michael Heller Orono: National Poetry Foundation; University of Maine at Orono, 1993 193–207 Judd, William Edward “The Metrics of Wallace Stevens.” PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1975 Juhasz, Suzanne H Metaphor and the Poetry of Williams, Pound and Stevens Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1974 Keats, John Poetical Works Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958 Kermode, Frank “Dwelling Poetically in Connecticut.” Wallace Stevens: A Celebration Ed Frank and Robert Buttel Doggett Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980 224 Bibliography ——— The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction New York: Oxford University Press, 1967 ——— Wallace Stevens Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960 Kessler, Edward Images of Wallace Stevens New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972 Keyser, Samuel Jay “Wallace Stevens: Form and Meaning in Four Poems.” Linguistic Perspectives on Literature Eds K L Ching Marvin, C Haley Michael and F Lunsford Ronald London: Routledge, 1980 257–81 Kjoerup, Frank Sprog Versus Sprog Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2002 Knight, Steven T “The Craft of Contradiction: Poetic Arrangement in Ideas of Order.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 6.1–2 (Spring 1982): 32–38 Kristeva, Julia Revolution in Poetic Language New York: Columbia University Press, 1984 Lakritz, Andrew M Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996 Lecercle, Jean-Jacques The Philosophy of Nonsense London: Routledge, 1994 Leggett, B J Wallace Stevens and Poetic Theory: Conceiving the Supreme Fiction Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987 Lensing, George S Wallace Stevens: A Poet’s Growth Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986 Lentricchia, Frank Modernist Quartet Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Levinas, Emmanuel Existence and Existents Trans Alphonso Lingis The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978 ——— “Reality and Its Shadow.” The Levinas Reader Ed Seán Hand Oxford: Blackwell, 1989 ——— Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority Trans Alphonso Lingis Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969 Longenbach, James Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 MacLeod, Glen Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show to Abstract Expressionism New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993 Maeder, Beverly Wallace Stevens’ Experimental Language: The Lion in the Lute New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999 Mao, Douglas “How to Do Things with Modernism.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 26.2 (Fall 2002): 160–80 Marks, Emerson Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since the Renaissance Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998 Meschonnic, Henri Critique du rhythme Paris: Verdier, 1982 Miller, J Hillis The Linguistic Moment: From Wordsworth to Stevens Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 Bibliography 225 ——— Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965 ——— “Wallace Stevens’ Poetry of Being.” The Act of the Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens Ed Roy Harvey and J Hillis Miller Pierce Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965 162 Morris, Pam, ed The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov London: Arnold, 2001 Mukarovský, Jan, John Burbank, and P Steiner, eds On Poetic Language Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press, 1976 Newcomb, John Wallace Stevens and Literary Canons Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992 Nicholson, Mervyn “‘The Slightest Sound Matters’: Stevens’ Sound Cosmology.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 18.1 (1994): 63–80 Nyberg, Lennart “‘THE IMAGINATION’: A Twentieth-Century Itinerary.” Rethinking Modernism Ed Marianne Thormählen Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 40–54 Ong, Walter J “A Dialectic of Aural and Objective Correlatives.” 20th Century Literary Criticism Ed David Lodge London: Longman, 1972 498–508 Parker, Patricia “The Motive for Metaphor: Stevens and Derrida” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 7.3/4 (Fall 1983): 76–88 Perloff, Marjorie “Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 13.3 (1982): 485–510 ——— “Revolving in Crystal: The Supreme Fiction and the Impasse of Modernist Lyric.” Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism Ed Albert Gelpi Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 41–64 Prendergast, Christopher The Order of Mimesis: Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, Flaubert Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 Rae, Patricia “Bloody Battle-Flags and Cloudy Days: The Experience of Metaphor in Pound and Stevens.” Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society Special Issue: Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound 26.2 (Fall 2002): 143–59 Renza, Louis A Edgar Allan Poe, Wallace Stevens and the Poetics of American Privacy Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 2002 Richardson, Joan “A Reading of ‘Sea Surface Full of Clouds.’” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society.3–4 (Fall 1982): 60–68 ——— Wallace Stevens: The Early Years New York: Beech Tree Books, 1985 ——— Wallace Stevens: The Later Years New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988 Riddel, Joseph The Clairvoyant Eye: The Poetry and Poetics of Wallace Stevens Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965 ——— “Metaphoric Staging: Stevens’ Beginning Again of the ‘End of the Book.’” Wallace Stevens: A Celebration Ed Frank Doggett and Robert Buttell Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980 308–38 226 Bibliography ——— “The Contours of Stevens’ Criticism.” ELH, Baltimore, MD (1964): 31, 106–38 Robinson, Fred Miller “Strategies of Smallness: Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 10.1 (Spring 1986): 27–35 Rosu, Anca The Metaphysics of Sound in Wallace Stevens Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995 ——— “The Theoretical Afterlife of Wallace Stevens.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 24.2 (Fall 2000): 208–20 Santayana, George A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems New York: Scribner’s, 1901 ——— Interpretations of Poetry and Religion Ed William G Holzberger and Herman J Saatkamp Jr Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990 Schaum, Melita “Lyric Resistance: Views of the Political in the Poetics of Wallace Stevens and H D.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 13.2 (Fall 1989): 191–205 ———, ed Wallace Stevens and the Feminine Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993 ——— Wallace Stevens and the Critical Schools Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988 Sherry, Vincent Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Radical Modernism New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 Shklovsky, Victor “Art as Technique.” Critical Theory since Plato 1917 Ed Hazard Adams Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992 751–59 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature and Language Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978 ——— Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968 Sontag, Susan Against Interpretation New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1967 Steele, Timothy Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1990 Stevens, Holly Bright Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens New York: Knopf, 1977 Stevens, Wallace The Voice of the Poet: Wallace Stevens Ed J D McClatchy New York: Random House Audio, 2004 Taylor, Charles Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989 Taylor, Dennis “The Apparitional Meters of Wallace Stevens.” The Wallace Stevens Journal: A Publication of the Wallace Stevens Society 15.2 (Fall 1991): 209–28 Tennyson, Alfred Lord Selected Poems London: Penguin, 1991 Todorov, Tzvetan “Three Conceptions of Poetic Language.” Russian Formalism: A Retrospective Glance A Festschrift in Honor of Victor Erlich Ed Robert Louis and Stephen Rudy Jackson New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1985 Bibliography 227 Tynianov, Yuri The Problem of Verse Language Trans Michael and Brent Harvey Sosa Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1981 Valéry, Paul Aesthetics Trans Ralph Mannheim New York: Pantheon, 1964 Vendler, Helen On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens’ Longer Poems Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969 Wesling, Donald The Chances of Rhyme: Device and Modernity Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 ——— The Scissors of Meter: Grammetrics and Reading Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996 Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass New York: Modern Library, 1993 ——— Complete Poetry and Collected Prose New York: Library of America, 1982 Williams, William Carlos Collected Poems Vol I London: Paladin, 1987 Wimsatt, W.K “The Concept of Meter: An Exercise in Abstraction.” Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965 Yeats, William Butler “Symbol as Revelation.” The Modern Tradition: Backgrounds of Modern Literature New York: Oxford University Press, 1965 60–65 ——— The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B Yeats New York: MacMillan, 1957 Ziarek, Krzysztof Inflected Language: Toward a Hermeneutics of Nearness Heidegger, Levinas, Stevens, Celan Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994 General Index A Abstraction: the ambiguity of, 4, 67–71; and decreation, 42; and epistemology, 67–70; as a means to achieve poetic closure, 69–70, 147; and artistic autonomy, 62, 102, 106, 147; as an effect of rhythm and sound patterning, 70, 122, 174; and metaphor, 158 Adorno, T.W., 62, 84 Alliteration, 52, 113, 132, 162, 170, 182n29, 216n41 Altieri, Charles, 5, 67, 158, 159, 214n28 Anachrony, 57, 120 Aristotle, 75, 124, 126, 155–158, 209n36 Arnold, Matthew, 111 Assonance, 162, 165, 216n41 Attridge, Derek, 17, 20–25, 147, 175, 184n47, 187nn91–92, 187– 188n76, 211n53, 217n3 Aviram, Amittai, 17, 25, 46–47, 166, 168, 186n81, 196n60, 209n42 B Bakhtin, Mikhail, 71, 91, 96, 119, 120, 180n5, 207nn22–23 Barthes, Roland, 126 Bates, Milton J., Bateson, F.W., 11 Beehler, Michael, 14, 184n63, Benamou, Michel, 32, 205n11 Bird song in Stevens, 37, 39, 55, 118–120, 127–146, 172 Blackmur, R.P., 18 Blake, William, 39 Blasing, Mutlu Kanuk, 51, 62 Bloom, Harold, 2, 18, 28, 29, 64, 65, 80, 94, 114, 118, 154, 161, 162, 168, 190nn5–6, 201n12 Booker, Michael Keith, 91, 207n22 Borroff, Marie, 5, 15, 69 Bové, Paul A., 14, 206n12 Brazeau, Peter, 49, 150, 198n78, 211 Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught, 5, 14, 158, 180n12 Bruns, Gerald L., 119, 179–180n5, 184n63, 205n3, 206–207n20 Burke, Kenneth, 5, 85, 153, 161, 181n21, 202n23, 214n33 Burnshaw, Stanley, 3, 100, 102, 103, 104, 179n4, 194n49, 203n39 C City, the (in poetry), 30–32, 35–42, 52–60, 63–65, 69, 202n28 Cleghorn, Angus, 5, 14, 100, 101, 105 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 68, 87, 96, 104, 124, 153 Collins, Christopher, 17 Cook, Eleanor, 18, 121, 130, 185n67, Costello Bonnie, 32, 112, 205–206n11 Cunningham, J.V., 12 Cushman, Stephen, 6–7, 9, 29, 190n6, 199n97 229 230 D De Man, Paul, 17, 131 Derrida, Jacques, 17, 57, 86, 88, 89, 91, 111, 121, 146–148, 149, 155, 158–159, 184n47, 205n57 Dickinson, Emily, 28, 29, 30, 123, 197n74 Dipodic rhythm, 99 E Easthope, Anthony, 22, 25, 163, 187n89, 187n94, 189n104, 216n38 Eeckhout, Bart, 18, 25, 185n68, 188n103 Eliot, Thomas Stearns: and modernist poetics, 6–10, 12, 27–28, 58, 125, 157, 182n28, 187n94, 189n104, 193n43, 212n67, 216n38; in relation to Stevens’ poetry and poetics, 11, 12, 18, 27–29, 54–55, 57, 58, 67, 102, 125, 182n28, 202n28, 205–6n11, 209n3; and Whitman, 28, 33; “The Hollow Men”, 75, 77 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 28, 35, 154, 190n6 Erlich, Victor, 21 General Index Foreign diction in Stevens, 49,138–139, 197n67 Four-beat rhythm: the scanning of, 23–24, 52, 76, 78, 90–91, 162; relationship to five-beat rhythm, 22–23; as metric coding, 128; and ideology, 163, 187n94 Frost, Robert, 12, 45, 81 Frye, Northrop, 98, 121, 187n95, 207n26, 208n28 G Gerber, Natalie, 49, 174, 175, 197n76 H Harrington, Joseph, 42 Hass, Robert, 166 Heidegger, Martin, 14, 84, 115, 116, 127, 142, 206n12, 212n67 Henley, William Ernest, 39, 193n39 Heringman, Bernard, 150, 152 Herrnstein Smith, Barbara, 16, 91, 165, 176, 186n84 Hollander, John, 25, 128, 135, 132, 139, 141, 196n64 Horkheimer, Max, 84 F I Filreis, Alan, 5, 42, 43, 47, 49, 87, 88, 142, 181n17, 194n51, 196nn61–62, 197n68, 203n39, 204n45, 212n61 Finch, Annie, 20, 25, 54, 189nn104–105, 191n21 Fisher, Barbara, 123, 204n46 Five-beat rhythm: the scanning of, 22, 23, 24, 113, 114, 132, 162, 186n78, 216n40; relationship to four-beat rhythm, 23, 90, 162; and speech, 12, 24, 91, 187–188n96, 197n67; as metric coding, 46, 91, 112 113, 118; ‘split’ pentameter,’ 53–57; as a traditional form, 25, 46, 91, 112, 168; as elevated diction, 25, 112, 113; and ideology, 168, 187n89, 189n104 infinitive, the: as anaphora, 80, 165; as linguistic strategy, 80, 88, 89, 168, 169 J Jakobson, Roman, 13, 15 Jameson, Fredric, 55, 59, 60, 67, 197n75 Jazz, 50, 51, 197n71 See also music as metaphor for poetry Johnson, Kent, 69, 109 Juhasz, Susanne, 157 K Keats, John, 36, 120, 123, 127, 128, 206n11, 210n43 Kermode, Frank, 33, 84, 85, 100, 103, 165, 200n2, 203n39, 204n52 Kjørup, Frank, 16, 22, 186n81, 187n85 Knight, Stephen, 74, 200n3 General Index Kristeva, Julia, 17 231 O Ortega y Gasset, Manuel, L Lakritz, Andrew, 5, 18, 92, 124, 195n56, 202n28, 209n36 Latimer, Ronald Lane, 47, 50, 83, 85, 86, 88, 106, 136, 149, 194n49, 196n62 Lecercle, Jean-Jacques, 75, 120 Leggett, B.J., 67, 68, 69, 70, 185n68, 199n105 Lensing, George, 5, 93, 183n33 Lentricchia, Frank, 5, 33, 38, 39, 41, 42, 59, 63, 65, 122, 139, 193n43 Levinas, Emmanuel, 17, 18, 141–142, 144–146, 166–167, 184n63, 201n10, 212n67, 212n70 Longenbach, James, 5, 213n7 M Maeder, Beverly, 2, 5, 14, 70, 71, 104, 105, 122, 137, 129, 157–158, 201n10, 201n13, 211n58, 214n23 McLeod, Glen, 32 Meschonnic, Henri, 15, 17, 207n22 Metaphor: as movement, ‘transfer’ or ‘transport’, 66, 75, 124, 155–157, 159, 163; and the imagination, 124; as fiction, 160; and abstraction, 66, 157–158; and concretion, 160; and metonymy, 30; central theoretical notions of, 158–159; in relation to traditional/ideological conceptions or ‘dead’ metaphors, 71, 82, 111, 143, 161 Meter, the concept of, 21–22, 25 See also rhythm Miller, J Hillis, 17, 50, 51, 58, 67 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 48, 50, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 198n78 Mukarovsky, Jan, 14, 19, 185n72 Music as a metaphor for poetry, 6, 8, 11, 34, 51, 57, 117, 128, 133, 135, 139, 144–145 See also rhythm; meter P Parker, Patricia, 111, 202n27 Pentameter See five-beat rhythm Perloff, Marjorie, 5, 158, 176, 179n5 Plato, 29, 52, 84, 95, 123–126, 145 Plotinus, 123 Poe, Edgar Allen, 30, 122, 130 Poetic closure: as resolution, 15, 16, 19, 51, 82, 86, 99, 117, 123, 165, 170; as a means of escapism and artistic isolation, 4, 7–8, 33, 46, 82, 137, 142, 144, 145, 176; as an effect of meter, rhythm and/or sound patterning, 19, 25, 51, 69, 91, 144, 165, 170; and abstraction, 4; and stasis, 74, 86; and disclosure, 112; and truth, 144; and reality, 145; and ‘closeness,’ 146, 211n54; and graphic form, 123; and interpretation, 175 See also abstraction Popular culture and poetry, 94–98 110–111, 113–115 Pound, Ezra: and modernist poetics, 8, 9, 27, 28, 50, 111, 114, 125, 157, 163, 187n94, 189n104; in relation to Stevens’ poetry and poetics, 9, 18, 59, 102, 111, 112, 114, 157, 163, 168, 179–180n5, 181n14, 182n28, 202n28, 209n36; and politics, 146, 209n67, 212n71 Powell, Judge Arthur, 49 Prendergast, Christopher, 125–126 R Rakosi, Carl, 69, 109 Renza, Louis A., 83, 201n16 Rhythm, the concept of: in relation to the concept of meter, 21–23, 25; and cognition, 15, 55; and the body, 21; and meaning, 9, 12, 15, 16, 20–21, 157, 169; 232 and speech, 12; and the ‘poetic function’, 12–13, 146–47; and poetic closure, 19; as hypnosis, 165–168 Richards, I.A., 68, 87, 124, 199n105 Richardson, Joan, 5, 28, 32, 73, 151, 152, 192n34 Riddel, Joseph, 14, 50, 51, 62, 154, 155, 161, 180n7, 197n71, 199n92 Rosu, Anca, 5, 70, 121, 131, 135, 207n22, 207n27, 210n44, 210n50 General Index Taylor, Dennis, 25, 46, 118, 189n106, 208n35 Tetrameter See four-beat rhythm Todorov, Tzvetan, 14, 19 Tynianov, Jurij, 13, 19 V Valéry, Paul, 32, 167, 212n67 Vendler, Helen, 3, 4, 13, 17, 20, 82, 103, 118, 176, 200n2, 204n52, 211n53 S W Santayana, George, 33, 34, 87, 191nn29– 30, 192nn32–33 Scanning See five-beat rhythm; four-beat rhythm; meter; rhythm Scarlet Pimpernel, The, 86 Schaum, Melita, 14, 66, 154, 176, 180n7 Shakespeare, William, 39 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 54, 135, 139, 202n23 Shklovsky, Viktor, 13, 14, 15, 21, 160, 184n50 Sontag, Susan, 17 Stevens, Holly, 39, 151, 152, 192n33, 204n45 Wells, H.G., 43, 45, 195n55 Wesling, Donald, 8, 17, 23, 107, 182n32, 187n93 Whitman, Walt, 28–35, 47, 50, 52, 59, 98, 134, 137, 190n4, 191n21 Williams, William Carlos, 92, 108–112, 115, 120, 121, 132, 143, 157, 205nn2–3, 206n15 Wordsworth, William, 28, 31, 32, 37, 40, 127 T Ziarek, Krzysztof, 142, 185–186n63, 206n12 Y Yeats, William Butler, 143, 167 Z Taylor, Charles, 125 Index of Poems and Other Texts by Wallace Stevens A L “A Fading of the Sun,” 47, 93 “A Postcard from the Volcano,” 153 “A Window in the Slums,” 39–40 “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” 3–4, 66, 137, 174 “Anatomy of Monotony,” 74, 84 “Autumn Refrain,” 128–135, 137, 140, 144, 163, 166, 170, 174 “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery,” 45, 84, 94, 111, 128, 161 “Lions in Sweden,” 44 B “Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself,” 41, 139–142 “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction,” 61, 63, 65–70, 82, 92, 95, 103, 105, 109, 112, 121, 135–137, 146, 153, 157–158, 172, 206n16, 211n54 M “Man and Bottle,” 44 “Mozart, 1935,” 47–61, 67, 72, 173 N “Banal Sojourn,” 127 C “Credences of Summer,” 138 D “Domination of Black,” 135 O E “Of Hartford in a Purple Light,” 89 “Of Mere Being,” 75, 142–146 “Of Modern Poetry,” 44, 85, 90 “Effects of Analogy,” 11, 41, 59 “Esthétique du Mal,” 87, 116, 199n92 P F “Farewell to Florida,” 5, 60, 89, 149–150, 152–155, 157–172 “Prologues to What Is Possible,” 155–158, 171–172 Q G “Questions are Remarks,” 127 “Gallant Château,” 174 S I “Insurance and Social Change,” 43–44 “Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz,” 57, 59, 73–74, 121 233 234 Index of Poems and Other Texts by Wallace Stevens “Sailing after Lunch,” 82–93, 98, 109, 117, 119, 144, 159, 173 “Snow and Stars,” 127–128 “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together,” 160 “Sonnet: Build up the walls about me,” 40–41 “Statuary,” 36 “Sunday Morning,” 23, 36, 46, 82, 114, 135 T “The American Sublime,” 94–96, 98–99, 173 “The Auroras of Autumn,” 138, 161 “The Ballade of the Pink Parasol,” 122 “The Beggar,” 36 “The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws,” 143 “The Brave Man,” 27, 92–93 “The Comedian as the Letter C,” 135, 136, 141, 149 “The Doctor of Geneva,” 87 “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” 12 “The Idea of Order at Key West,” 34, 48, 72 “The Irrational Element in Poetry,” 9, 66, 124 “The Man on the Dump,” 110–128, 134, 137, 144, 159 “The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad,” 45–46, 85 “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” 45, 58, 104, 109, 111, 137, 201n10 “The Minstrel,” 37 “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” 10–11, 27, 62, 65, 67–68, 73 “The Owl in the Sarcophagus,” 65 “The Pigeons,” 36 “The Plain Sense of Things,” 76, 79, “The Pure Good of Theory,” 84, 122 “The Snow Man,” 53, 79, 127 “The Westwardness of Everything,” 111 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” 211n58 “To an Old Philosopher in Rome,” 33, 139 “To the One of Fictive Music,” 24, 46, 187n96 “Two or Three Ideas,” 10 V “Vita Mea,” 41 W “Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu,” 74–82, 87, 98, 121, 173 ... identification and explanation without intent to infringe Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Holander, Stefan, 1971– Wallace Stevens and the realities of poetic language / by Stefan Holander... Ordinary Evening in New Haven” Wallace Stevens and the Realities of Poetic Language (CP 465–89), was used by Vendler to indicate the struggles with a resilient poetic language set off in the thirties... that their way of doing this is in poetry, in the peculiar language of singular poems, which includes their rhythm, meter and sound-patterning Even when the original historical context of the