The paramount relation between poetry and painting today, between modern man and modern art, is simply this: that in an age in which disbelief is so … - Wallace Stevens

The number of ways of passing between the traditional two fixed points of man’s life, that is to say, of passing from the self to God, is fixed only by the limitations of space, which is limitless. The eternal philosopher is the eternal pilgrim on that road. It is difficult to take him seriously when he relies on the evidence of the teeth, the throat and the bowels. Yet in the one poem that is unimpeachably divine, the poem of the ascent into heaven, it is possible to say that there can be no faults, since it is precisely the faults of life this poem enables us to leave behind. If the idea of God is the ultimate poetic idea, then the idea of the ascent into heaven is only a little below it.

What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud, Serenely gazing at the violent abyss, Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory,<p> Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space, Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,<p>Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight, Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied? Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.