"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."
Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.
"Let’s see the very thing and nothing else. Let’s see it with the hottest fire of sight. Burn everything not part of it to ash. Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky Without evasion by a single metaphor. Look at it in its essential barrenness And say this, this is the centre that I seek."
Wallace Stevens"First one beam, then another, then A thousand are radiant in the sky. Each is both star and orb; and day Is the riches of their atmosphere."
Wallace Stevens"Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore."
Wallace Stevens"Beauty is momentary in the mind — The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the bodys beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing. So gardens die, their meek breath scenting The cowl of winter, done repenting. So maidens die, to the auroral Celebration of a maidens choral."
Wallace Stevens"Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!"
Wallace Stevens"If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism."
Wallace Stevens