Wallace Stevens Quotes

Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis, Incipit and a form to speak the word And every latent double in the word, Beau linguist.

The clouds preceded us. There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began, Venerable and articulate and complete. From this the poem springs: that we live in a place That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed: The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps, The aureole above the humming house... It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

Poetry is the subject of the poem, From this the poem issues and To this returns. Between the two, Between issue and return, there is An absence in reality, Things as they are. Or so we say. But are these separate?

There are men of the East, he said, who are the East. There are men of a province who are that province. There are men of a valley who are that valley.

That strange flower, the sun, Is just what you say. Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad..

This is old song That will not declare itself...

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

It is a world of words to the end of it, / In which nothing solid is its solid self.

The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse Suggested that, at the final funeral, The music halted and the horse stood still.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

I play. But this is what I think.

That scrawny cry — It was A chorister whose c preceded the choir. It was part of the colossal sun, Surrounded by its choral rings, Still far away. It was like A new knowledge of reality.

Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.