WEBVTT 00:00.950 --> 00:03.720 Professor Langdon Hammer: Today, 00:03.722 --> 00:05.402 last Stevens lecture. 00:05.400 --> 00:10.800 Late Stevens, Stevens after World War Two, 00:10.796 --> 00:18.426 in the late '40s and early 1950s at the end of his life. 00:18.430 --> 00:23.980 That's my subject, really, the latest writing that 00:23.978 --> 00:28.728 we will have chronologically, historically, 00:28.734 --> 00:33.154 that we will have discussed so far. 00:33.150 --> 00:39.450 One of the general themes of what I had to say has been 00:39.450 --> 00:44.820 modern poetry's role in a secularizing culture: 00:44.816 --> 00:50.876 how the general decay of personal religious belief in 00:50.883 --> 00:58.003 practice enters into the way in which these poets imagine what 00:58.000 --> 01:02.550 poetry is, what it means for them, 01:02.554 --> 01:05.334 what they can do with it. 01:05.329 --> 01:09.389 "It is a habit with me to be thinking of some substitute for 01:09.393 --> 01:12.013 religion," Stevens says in a letter. 01:12.010 --> 01:15.900 "My trouble and the trouble of a great many people is the loss 01:15.900 --> 01:19.790 of belief in the sort of God in whom we were all brought up to 01:19.790 --> 01:22.560 believe." Stevens, however, 01:22.562 --> 01:26.792 responds to this problem vigorously. 01:26.790 --> 01:30.060 He tends to see it, as I've been saying, 01:30.062 --> 01:31.742 as an opportunity. 01:31.739 --> 01:37.889 Power and freedom that were formerly assigned to God are 01:37.890 --> 01:41.580 claimed for man, for the human, 01:41.580 --> 01:46.940 for the poet in particular, but the poet viewed in Stevens 01:46.938 --> 01:51.918 not as a kind of exemplary individual but as a kind of 01:51.920 --> 01:59.250 model of the human and of, in fact, common properties and 01:59.246 --> 02:01.946 powers within us. 02:01.950 --> 02:06.480 In general, I would say that the poet stands for a kind of 02:06.481 --> 02:11.411 general human capacity to create the world in the act of seeing 02:11.410 --> 02:17.200 and describing it, very much as Marie was arguing 02:17.196 --> 02:22.946 last Wednesday. Stevens, as I began by saying, 02:22.954 --> 02:27.164 is very much a poet of this world. 02:27.159 --> 02:31.029 We are an "unhappy people in a happy world." 02:31.030 --> 02:35.070 The world is, as "The Auroras of Autumn" 02:35.071 --> 02:39.011 suggests, without malice towards us. 02:39.009 --> 02:43.169 Original sin, what Stevens calls "the enigma 02:43.174 --> 02:49.084 of the guilty dream," this is a kind of exhausted fiction that 02:49.082 --> 02:51.312 Stevens throws off. 02:51.310 --> 02:56.200 He lives in a world that's full of sensual, seasonal pleasures 02:56.199 --> 02:59.889 and perceptions, including the primary pleasure 02:59.886 --> 03:05.346 of perception itself; the seasons providing at once a 03:05.348 --> 03:11.148 kind of "climate," to use his word, a circumstance, 03:11.150 --> 03:19.470 as well as a symbol for this way of being and knowing, 03:19.466 --> 03:23.386 knowing our experience. 03:23.389 --> 03:28.629 The seasons are a kind of answer, you could say, 03:28.630 --> 03:34.430 in Stevens, for traditional myth, providing a kind of 03:34.428 --> 03:38.998 structure of recurrence and recovery. 03:39.000 --> 03:44.500 Well, how does such a poet imagine the end of life, 03:44.500 --> 03:47.580 of his life in particular? 03:47.580 --> 03:52.800 Can a vision of the world that's so focused on happiness 03:52.801 --> 03:55.841 really include death and loss? 03:55.840 --> 04:03.310 Can it really include in its account of the world that is so 04:03.313 --> 04:08.003 right, can it really include grief? 04:08.000 --> 04:12.170 Stevens wants not an alternative to religion but, 04:12.173 --> 04:15.133 as he says, a substitute for it; 04:15.129 --> 04:19.519 in particular, a substitute for the solutions 04:19.517 --> 04:22.107 religion gives to death. 04:22.110 --> 04:26.780 "Poetry is a means of redemption," Stevens said in 04:26.780 --> 04:29.640 that adage, and he meant it. 04:29.639 --> 04:32.459 But what exactly did he mean by it? 04:32.459 --> 04:38.689 We'll look at a number of poems that suggest answers, 04:38.687 --> 04:42.277 beginning with, on page 260, 04:42.279 --> 04:49.779 a poem called "Large Red Man Reading," a poem included 04:49.779 --> 04:58.269 in--written after "The Auroras of Autumn" but included in the 04:58.268 --> 05:05.058 volume called The Auroras of Autumn: 05:05.060 --> 05:08.900 05:08.899 --> 05:13.789 There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his 05:13.791 --> 05:17.871 phrases, As he sat there reading, 05:17.870 --> 05:22.030 aloud, the great blue tabulae. 05:22.029 --> 05:27.029 They were those from the wilderness of stars that had 05:27.031 --> 05:32.171 expected more. [Those that have come to hear 05:32.165 --> 05:35.905 him read.] There were those that returned 05:35.908 --> 05:39.078 to hear him read from the poem of life, 05:39.079 --> 05:43.909 Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, 05:43.911 --> 05:46.231 the tulips among them. 05:46.230 --> 05:51.000 [Another sort of domestic still-life, a little like that 05:51.003 --> 05:56.183 in "Poems of our Climate."] They were those that would have 05:56.175 --> 05:59.255 wept to step barefoot into reality. 05:59.259 --> 06:03.699 They would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the 06:03.704 --> 06:06.974 frost And cried out to feel it again, 06:06.967 --> 06:11.617 have run fingers over leaves And against the most coiled 06:11.621 --> 06:14.451 thorn, have seized on what was ugly 06:14.449 --> 06:17.759 And laughed, as he sat there reading, 06:17.758 --> 06:24.828 from out of the purple tabulae [now the tabulae have gotten 06:24.830 --> 06:31.470 redder; they were blue, now they're purple], 06:31.470 --> 06:36.320 The outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of 06:36.323 --> 06:39.443 its law: Poesis, poesis, 06:39.443 --> 06:43.703 the literal characters, the vatic lines, 06:43.699 --> 06:51.099 Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended 06:51.103 --> 06:53.923 hearts, Took on color, 06:53.921 --> 06:59.211 took on shape and the size of things as they are 06:59.209 --> 07:04.019 And spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had 07:04.015 --> 07:08.065 lacked. This is a version of the 07:08.067 --> 07:13.727 hero-poet in Stevens as a kind of creative force, 07:13.730 --> 07:18.540 a figure that appears in Stevens's poems in many guises, 07:18.539 --> 07:24.699 as a "scholar of one candle," as the single man, 07:24.704 --> 07:29.314 as a rabbi, as a giant. 07:29.310 --> 07:34.930 In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," he's called "the 07:34.929 --> 07:38.159 MacCullough." In what sense is, 07:38.156 --> 07:42.216 however, this creative force – this giant, 07:42.220 --> 07:46.000 this figure of the poet – a reader? 07:46.000 --> 07:51.360 What sense does it make to call the poet a reader? 07:51.360 --> 07:56.530 What the poet does here is read the world. 07:56.529 --> 08:00.629 Writing is a kind of reading, for Stevens. 08:00.629 --> 08:04.619 He reads the world as if it were a poetic text. 08:04.620 --> 08:05.990 His poem is a kind of reading. 08:05.990 --> 08:09.250 It's kind of reading in the sense of interpretation and in 08:09.250 --> 08:12.340 the sense of reading aloud, as I've just been doing. 08:12.339 --> 08:17.989 It's a vocalization of "the outlines of being and its 08:17.986 --> 08:22.326 expressings," to use Stevens's phrase. 08:22.329 --> 08:25.889 It's a kind of putting-into-speech of the 08:25.885 --> 08:27.925 world, of experience. 08:27.930 --> 08:31.840 The suggestion is that the poet's utterance, 08:31.839 --> 08:37.059 which is something that sounds, it sounds in the ear, 08:37.062 --> 08:42.992 is a kind of decoding of the primary text of the world, 08:42.990 --> 08:46.400 suggesting that the world is a kind of poem, 08:46.398 --> 08:50.998 something that can be and must be read in just the same way 08:50.995 --> 08:53.765 that we read poems on the page. 08:53.769 --> 08:56.959 And in fact, it's one thing that reading 08:56.963 --> 09:01.143 poems on the page can help us to do, for Stevens; 09:01.139 --> 09:06.309 that is, in a sense, learn how to read the world. 09:06.309 --> 09:10.499 Let's look at this figure a little more closely. 09:10.500 --> 09:14.490 The creator Stevens describes, here as elsewhere, 09:14.486 --> 09:17.456 is large. Why? 09:17.460 --> 09:20.090 Well, Stevens himself was. 09:20.090 --> 09:23.700 He was a big guy. 09:23.700 --> 09:27.220 He's large, too, because he's a parent, 09:27.216 --> 09:31.966 he's a grownup. He's a kind of consoling and 09:31.971 --> 09:37.541 comprehensive figure in this poem and in others. 09:37.539 --> 09:41.359 He's also large because he is an abstraction. 09:41.360 --> 09:45.660 He's in that sense a generalization. 09:45.659 --> 09:50.619 When Stevens speaks of the abstract, he doesn't mean the 09:50.615 --> 09:55.295 insubstantial or invisible but rather the general, 09:55.299 --> 10:00.279 a kind of representative and summative figure, 10:00.282 --> 10:03.052 made out of many parts. 10:03.049 --> 10:06.259 In this sense, the large red man is large 10:06.260 --> 10:09.310 because he is a kind of abstraction. 10:09.310 --> 10:11.330 He is the sum of many parts. 10:11.330 --> 10:15.400 He represents, as I say, a general human 10:15.401 --> 10:19.181 capacity. He's red, moreover, 10:19.180 --> 10:25.550 because he's vital, "primitive" in the sense of 10:25.548 --> 10:29.008 primary or aboriginal. 10:29.009 --> 10:35.269 He is a Native American, "native" in the sense that he's 10:35.271 --> 10:42.101 a kind of projection of a place, located in and rooted in the 10:42.101 --> 10:45.711 place. Adam, after all, 10:45.706 --> 10:50.326 means "red clay," doesn't it? 10:50.330 --> 10:55.340 He's red also because he is red-blooded. 10:55.340 --> 11:01.430 He's healthy. And keep in mind that all these 11:01.432 --> 11:09.982 properties are sort of metaphors or figures for human capacity, 11:09.978 --> 11:14.938 for aspects of voice and of soul. 11:14.940 --> 11:18.210 And finally, he's red because he's a reader. 11:18.210 --> 11:22.320 Stevens is punning, he's suggesting that to be a 11:22.318 --> 11:27.908 reader, to read is to be able to recognize and speak the language 11:27.913 --> 11:32.443 of the world, and it is in the process to be 11:32.444 --> 11:38.034 reddened, to be filled with vitality and life and native 11:38.027 --> 11:42.977 strength and blood, what Stevens calls in this poem 11:42.983 --> 11:46.693 "feeling." He "spoke the feeling" for his 11:46.691 --> 11:50.621 auditors, "which is what they had lacked." 11:50.620 --> 11:57.190 Think of those auditors, those ghosts who come to hear 11:57.192 --> 12:02.282 the poem, the poem that he's chanting, as, 12:02.277 --> 12:06.987 well, they're figures of the dead. 12:06.990 --> 12:14.590 You could think of them as representing dead parts of 12:14.592 --> 12:20.882 ourselves, ourselves living in dead ways. 12:20.879 --> 12:27.379 You can see them representing anyone who comes to poetry in 12:27.378 --> 12:32.418 some state of death or of deadened feeling, 12:32.419 --> 12:39.109 which is of course the feeling that the people in The Waste 12:39.106 --> 12:40.856 Land have. 12:40.860 --> 12:47.820 Think of them as anyone who comes to poetry seeking to know 12:47.820 --> 12:50.940 life and to be creative. 12:50.940 --> 12:56.180 Renewal, regeneration: this is what the poem gives 12:56.181 --> 12:58.511 them; it's what Stevens wants. 12:58.510 --> 13:01.870 That's Williams's theme; it's Stevens's too. 13:01.870 --> 13:07.160 "Poesis": that Greek word means "making." 13:07.159 --> 13:15.089 Poetry is a means of redemption because it speaks feeling, 13:15.091 --> 13:21.071 and feeling in Stevens is a matter of sense, 13:21.074 --> 13:25.864 of sentiment. Some of Stevens's detractors 13:25.861 --> 13:29.751 – which he has, it must be admitted – view 13:29.754 --> 13:33.564 him as a kind of sterile intellectualist. 13:33.560 --> 13:36.400 This is not true. 13:36.399 --> 13:42.249 Stevens is fundamentally a poet of sentiment and in this way is 13:42.246 --> 13:46.486 in quite conventional ways a romantic poet. 13:46.490 --> 13:52.540 He has many defenses against the obvious danger of being a 13:52.536 --> 13:57.306 poet of sentiment, that is, sentimentality. 13:57.309 --> 13:59.429 How does he avoid being sentimental? 13:59.429 --> 14:03.379 Well, there's all that nonsense in Stevens. 14:03.380 --> 14:05.770 There's the impersonality. 14:05.769 --> 14:11.279 There's continually a kind of acute self-consciousness. 14:11.280 --> 14:13.550 There's abstract discourse. 14:13.549 --> 14:18.439 Stevens is often called, because of that abstract 14:18.442 --> 14:25.172 discourse, a philosophical poet, and he is a philosophical poet. 14:25.169 --> 14:30.689 However, we need to understand what that means in Stevens's 14:30.693 --> 14:33.773 case. His work raises philosophical 14:33.773 --> 14:37.023 problems and often does so explicitly; 14:37.019 --> 14:40.399 that is, problems of knowledge and problems of being, 14:40.402 --> 14:42.612 which are problems of epistemology, 14:42.613 --> 14:44.243 problems of ontology. 14:44.240 --> 14:50.200 But it's misleading to focus on these dimensions of his work 14:50.199 --> 14:55.759 without also at the same time addressing the question of 14:55.755 --> 14:59.735 sentiment. Again from his Adagia, 14:59.738 --> 15:03.638 Stevens says, "A poem should be part of one's 15:03.635 --> 15:07.215 sense of life." "A poem should be part of one's 15:07.215 --> 15:10.665 sense of life"; "sense" in two senses: 15:10.674 --> 15:15.994 "sense" in the sense of "understanding" is always 15:15.986 --> 15:21.626 implicated in "sense" as "feeling," for Stevens. 15:21.629 --> 15:26.829 The priority of sound in Stevens's poetry--which is the 15:26.830 --> 15:32.220 primary "sense" in poetry for Stevens – the priority of 15:32.224 --> 15:37.914 sound in Stevens is emblematic of the priority of feeling in 15:37.907 --> 15:43.197 Stevens and emblematic of the priority of aesthetics for 15:43.204 --> 15:49.014 Stevens – aesthetics, the domain of the senses and of 15:49.011 --> 15:53.931 feeling – the priority of aesthetics over and against 15:53.925 --> 15:57.185 philosophy. Stevens is a philosophical poet 15:57.190 --> 16:01.040 who includes philosophy as a kind of partial knowledge within 16:01.043 --> 16:06.173 the larger total knowledge; that is, a knowledge of feeling 16:06.167 --> 16:09.357 that the aesthetic, that poetry, 16:09.364 --> 16:11.844 provides and imparts. 16:11.840 --> 16:18.330 Let's look together at three poems that give a sense of this 16:18.330 --> 16:24.820 total knowledge that I'm talking about – a total knowledge 16:24.820 --> 16:31.530 representing a kind of unity of mind and body for Stevens that 16:31.529 --> 16:38.239 incorporates feeling, incorporates sense. 16:38.240 --> 16:44.550 For example, "The Poem That Took the Place 16:44.553 --> 16:49.023 of a Mountain" on page 264. 16:49.019 --> 16:54.399 Stevens, like his great inheritor, John Ashbery, 16:54.398 --> 17:00.918 I think, wrote titles and collected them and is the author 17:00.920 --> 17:06.070 of not just great poems but great titles. 17:06.070 --> 17:06.950 And here's one. 17:06.950 --> 17:11.080 17:11.079 --> 17:17.579 Here and in other late Stevens poems – poems that he wrote 17:17.580 --> 17:24.080 while specifically having in mind producing or reflecting on 17:24.081 --> 17:29.041 his collected poems – and incidentally, 17:29.039 --> 17:33.799 this is a kind of dream that Stevens's whole career is 17:33.795 --> 17:37.415 characterized by; that is, the sense of creating 17:37.420 --> 17:40.620 a body of work that would be in some sense total. 17:40.619 --> 17:43.679 His first book is called Harmonium and it's an 17:43.681 --> 17:46.921 enormous book which he waited a long time to publish, 17:46.920 --> 17:52.990 and he imagined perhaps producing a book called The 17:52.994 --> 17:55.864 Whole of Harmonium. 17:55.859 --> 18:01.169 His poem "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" suggests that 18:01.167 --> 18:05.587 ambition to produce, again, a sort of supreme 18:05.594 --> 18:11.264 fiction, a kind of total poem, even as that title also admits 18:11.256 --> 18:14.366 the impossibility of doing so. 18:14.369 --> 18:22.769 Here, late in life in 1952, he is contemplating his career 18:22.771 --> 18:29.701 as a whole and the body of work he has produced, 18:29.699 --> 18:35.889 and this is a poem reflecting on that. 18:35.890 --> 18:40.040 There it was, word for word, 18:40.039 --> 18:42.789 The poem that took the place of a mountain. 18:42.790 --> 18:48.990 He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned 18:48.989 --> 18:51.139 in the dust of his table. 18:51.140 --> 18:54.770 It reminded him how he had needed 18:54.769 --> 18:59.609 A place to go in his own direction [when he began], 18:59.609 --> 19:03.829 How [in the process of creating that body of work] 19:03.832 --> 19:06.722 he had recomposed the pines, 19:06.720 --> 19:12.660 Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds, 19:12.660 --> 19:16.420 For the outlook that would be right, 19:16.420 --> 19:22.160 Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: 19:22.160 --> 19:25.090 The exact rock where his inexactnesses 19:25.089 --> 19:28.889 Would discover, at last, the view toward which 19:28.885 --> 19:33.305 they had edged, Where he could lie and, 19:33.309 --> 19:39.119 gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and 19:39.117 --> 19:43.267 solitary home. Here, producing a poem, 19:43.273 --> 19:47.513 producing a body of poetry, living in poetry in the way 19:47.507 --> 19:51.347 Stevens has done, is like climbing a mountain; 19:51.349 --> 19:56.689 or rather, it's like both creating and climbing the 19:56.690 --> 20:02.670 mountain – both those things, step by step or "word for 20:02.671 --> 20:05.511 word." That's that interesting phrase 20:05.513 --> 20:07.113 that the poem begins with. 20:07.109 --> 20:11.609 Usually, we use that phrase to describe what? 20:11.610 --> 20:15.250 A kind of transcription; it was a "word for word" 20:15.249 --> 20:19.499 transcript or a translation: it was a "word for word" 20:19.495 --> 20:22.835 translation. It suggests that the poem that 20:22.839 --> 20:25.809 Stevens is talking about is, in some sense, 20:25.807 --> 20:29.397 a transcription or translation, word for word, 20:29.402 --> 20:34.512 which suggests in turn that the world was, even before it was 20:34.511 --> 20:39.341 put into language, already a kind of language, 20:39.338 --> 20:42.038 a set of words, a text. 20:42.039 --> 20:47.529 This develops the idea that the poet in Stevens is a reader. 20:47.529 --> 20:52.699 Writing here is an act of rendering the words of the 20:52.696 --> 20:57.556 world, making them over into the poet's words, 20:57.559 --> 21:03.789 and making them in this process available in and through his 21:03.785 --> 21:07.295 words. What is the nature of this 21:07.300 --> 21:10.280 translation or substitution? 21:10.279 --> 21:19.079 The phrase "took the place of" connotes both displacement and 21:19.079 --> 21:24.009 compensation. The poem took the place of a 21:24.006 --> 21:26.466 mountain; it displaces it. 21:26.470 --> 21:31.490 It also compensates for the loss of it. 21:31.490 --> 21:37.450 The world is somehow lost always in experience but then 21:37.449 --> 21:42.869 also found again in writing, in the act of creation that 21:42.867 --> 21:47.777 Stevens refers to as expressing his need of a place to go in his 21:47.783 --> 21:50.693 own direction. "It reminded him how he had 21:50.693 --> 21:53.393 needed / a place to go in his own direction." 21:53.390 --> 21:54.960 That could almost be Frost. 21:54.960 --> 21:58.760 That's the kind of phrase Frost might have used. 21:58.759 --> 22:02.709 It suggests both a kind of public ambition perhaps, 22:02.712 --> 22:05.482 also personal and private escape; 22:05.480 --> 22:08.040 some kind of, in any case, 22:08.038 --> 22:14.178 claim for independence and originality, eccentricity even. 22:14.180 --> 22:18.610 It says that in remaking the world in language, 22:18.614 --> 22:22.764 in the act of going in his own direction, 22:22.759 --> 22:26.099 the poet has created a certain point of view, 22:26.101 --> 22:28.381 a perspective on experience. 22:28.380 --> 22:34.230 It's what Stevens will call "his unique and solitary home": 22:34.229 --> 22:40.379 the world according to himself, which is as it must be for all 22:40.381 --> 22:42.691 of us. Stevens says, 22:42.690 --> 22:47.790 "he would be complete in an unexplained completion," 22:47.789 --> 22:52.489 "completion" meaning "the end of the climb," 22:52.490 --> 22:57.960 that his creation must go beyond explanation in the same 22:57.964 --> 23:01.254 way that poetry, the aesthetic, 23:01.250 --> 23:06.760 must pass beyond philosophy. 23:06.759 --> 23:11.999 Stevens says in another poem that poetry "must resist the 23:12.000 --> 23:15.650 intelligence, / Almost successfully." 23:15.650 --> 23:21.550 He's interested in an unexplained completion. 23:21.549 --> 23:25.019 He values poetry's "inexactnesses." 23:25.020 --> 23:28.230 It's an interesting word. 23:28.230 --> 23:33.870 His inexactnesses carry him along as he climbs edgewise – 23:33.874 --> 23:38.064 he "edges" – with the implication that, 23:38.059 --> 23:42.279 I suppose, on a mountain top, which is a precarious place 23:42.280 --> 23:45.370 where the ground is steep and unstable, 23:45.370 --> 23:48.090 you can only proceed carefully. 23:48.089 --> 23:54.779 You can only proceed by edging along. 23:54.779 --> 23:58.339 Poetry's path, in Stevens, is oblique. 23:58.339 --> 24:04.949 "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," Emily Dickinson said. 24:04.950 --> 24:08.260 Stevens's telling is oblique, slanted. 24:08.260 --> 24:11.000 He moves edgewise in his poems. 24:11.000 --> 24:13.880 He goes up the side of his high subjects. 24:13.880 --> 24:20.520 Yet in this way, he gives poetry in the end a 24:20.521 --> 24:23.541 view of the whole. 24:23.539 --> 24:28.429 And for all of its imaginings and for all of its celebration 24:28.428 --> 24:31.908 of imagining, for all of its celebration of 24:31.908 --> 24:36.798 poetry's power to displace the world and take the place of a 24:36.797 --> 24:40.607 mountain, the poem rests on a rock that 24:40.610 --> 24:46.020 is real: the rock of the real, which is a metaphor that recurs 24:46.016 --> 24:50.266 over and over again in Stevens's late poetry. 24:50.269 --> 24:54.789 You could keep in mind another one of Stevens's adages, 24:54.790 --> 24:58.390 one of his late adages: "The real," he says, 24:58.390 --> 25:01.990 "is only the base, but it is the base." 25:01.990 --> 25:05.830 This could be a kind of epigraph for this poem and many 25:05.833 --> 25:09.823 other Stevens poems, and it's an important idea to 25:09.818 --> 25:14.988 keep in mind as you try to think about the relationship between 25:14.990 --> 25:18.160 imagination and reality in Stevens. 25:18.160 --> 25:21.990 Along with the idea, in fact, that Stevens is a 25:21.987 --> 25:26.227 philosophical poet and a kind of intellectualist, 25:26.230 --> 25:30.010 there is the idea that he is an idealist who, 25:30.012 --> 25:34.482 because he believes in the power of the mind to bring 25:34.482 --> 25:38.862 reality into being, denies the reality of the 25:38.856 --> 25:42.506 physical world. This is another mistake, 25:42.512 --> 25:47.112 as that adage about the real and the base suggests. 25:47.109 --> 25:50.929 Stevens's last book of poems was called The Rock. 25:50.930 --> 25:57.110 There are many images of material reality in late 25:57.110 --> 26:01.360 Stevens, and they're important. 26:01.359 --> 26:05.839 Look at "The Plain Sense of Things" on page 266, 26:05.835 --> 26:07.735 another late poem. 26:07.740 --> 26:12.350 26:12.349 --> 26:15.579 Think of how many of these poems focus on moments of 26:15.584 --> 26:16.984 seasonal transition. 26:16.980 --> 26:20.490 Here's another. After the leaves have 26:20.491 --> 26:23.051 fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. 26:23.049 --> 26:27.809 [And there's that word "sense" again, in all of 26:27.809 --> 26:30.439 its multiple senses.] It is as if 26:30.440 --> 26:33.380 We had come to an end of the imagination, 26:33.380 --> 26:35.990 Inanimate in an inert savoir. 26:35.990 --> 26:39.300 26:39.300 --> 26:45.740 And he continues: Yet the absence of the 26:45.736 --> 26:50.026 imagination had Itself to be imagined. 26:50.030 --> 26:52.040 The great pond, The plain sense of it, 26:52.040 --> 26:53.650 without reflections, leaves, 26:53.650 --> 26:58.130 Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence 26:58.130 --> 27:03.540 Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, 27:03.539 --> 27:06.929 The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this 27:06.930 --> 27:10.020 Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge, 27:10.019 --> 27:14.939 Required, as a necessity requires. 27:14.940 --> 27:21.980 Here, Stevens is imagining the end of the fall, 27:21.980 --> 27:27.950 imagining what is beyond imagination; 27:27.950 --> 27:31.700 imagining, too, where imagination ends, 27:31.700 --> 27:34.760 where it tends, and its goal. 27:34.759 --> 27:39.619 Compare this to a late poem like "Circus Animals' Desertion" 27:39.619 --> 27:44.809 in Yeats where the poet descends from the ladders of imagination 27:44.808 --> 27:48.678 " the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." 27:48.680 --> 27:53.710 Stevens is treating this theme himself in somewhat different 27:53.708 --> 27:57.208 terms. You could also compare this 27:57.207 --> 28:03.777 poem to "Poems From Our Climate" and the will to come to primary 28:03.781 --> 28:08.791 terms in that poem, or "The Man on the Dump"; 28:08.789 --> 28:15.299 just as in "Poems of Our Climate," as Stevens does arrive 28:15.298 --> 28:21.478 at something like primary terms, what he calls here "the plain 28:21.483 --> 28:26.493 sense of things," what might be a limit or base for imagination, 28:26.490 --> 28:32.280 the real. His poem moves to recover and 28:32.277 --> 28:36.857 reassert the power of imagination. 28:36.859 --> 28:41.799 Even the end of imagination, he says, "had to be imagined as 28:41.796 --> 28:46.146 an inevitable knowledge" – an inevitable knowledge: 28:46.148 --> 28:51.418 a phrase that equivocates as to whether this knowledge had to be 28:51.419 --> 28:56.609 imagined of necessity or whether its necessity had itself to be 28:56.607 --> 29:01.117 imagined, which is an idea that reasserts 29:01.121 --> 29:05.711 the dominance of the mind even in its defeat, 29:05.710 --> 29:08.790 you could say. And in this sense, 29:08.786 --> 29:13.966 the poem is a small example of that long tradition of the 29:13.970 --> 29:17.960 Kantian sublime, where the mind is somehow 29:17.962 --> 29:22.782 checked and awed by natural force or natural powers – 29:22.783 --> 29:27.613 something greater than itself – and then recovers its 29:27.605 --> 29:33.045 strength as it recognizes that this defeat is itself a kind of 29:33.052 --> 29:37.072 mental representation or construction. 29:37.069 --> 29:41.629 External reality, its endurance and its 29:41.634 --> 29:47.044 materiality, is, in fact, a consoling fact for 29:47.038 --> 29:51.668 Stevens, which he affirms in another 29:51.670 --> 29:57.220 poem, a poem not in your anthology but one of my 29:57.223 --> 30:01.633 favorites, placed last in his Collected 30:01.626 --> 30:04.766 Poems and in your RIS packet. 30:04.769 --> 30:10.619 It's called "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself." 30:10.619 --> 30:14.669 Again, a kind of--The title suggests a kind of encounter 30:14.669 --> 30:17.319 with reality in its primary forms. 30:17.320 --> 30:25.000 30:25.000 --> 30:28.680 Placed here, at the very end of his 30:28.675 --> 30:34.075 Collected Poems, it was a kind of last poem, 30:34.081 --> 30:41.001 though it was not by any means the last poem he would write. 30:41.000 --> 30:45.490 At the earliest ending of winter [and now it's not the end 30:45.485 --> 30:48.985 of fall but rather the end of winter that Stevens 30:48.991 --> 30:54.141 is writing about], In March, a scrawny cry from 30:54.139 --> 31:00.019 outside [and that's a wonderfully resonate 31:00.019 --> 31:04.679 phrase--outside the room, outside the mind] 31:04.680 --> 31:09.630 Seemed like a sound [nonetheless] 31:09.626 --> 31:15.706 in his mind. He knew that he heard it, 31:15.710 --> 31:18.810 A bird's cry, at daylight or before, 31:18.810 --> 31:21.400 In the early March wind. 31:21.400 --> 31:27.090 The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache 31:27.086 --> 31:31.826 above snow… It would have been outside. 31:31.829 --> 31:35.309 It was not from the vast ventriloquism 31:35.309 --> 31:38.429 Of sleep's faded papier-mâché… [It wasn't 31:38.434 --> 31:42.274 something I dreamed or made up, it can't have been.] 31:42.270 --> 31:45.680 The sun was coming from outside. 31:45.680 --> 31:51.880 That scrawny cry [and he comes back to that word]--it was 31:51.880 --> 31:55.430 A chorister whose c preceded the choir. 31:55.430 --> 32:01.490 It was part of the colossal sun, Surrounded by its choral rings, 32:01.490 --> 32:05.940 Still far away. It was like 32:05.940 --> 32:10.000 A new knowledge of reality. 32:10.000 --> 32:15.310 The poem begins with a confusion of inner and outer. 32:15.309 --> 32:20.319 The cry that the poet hears, he wants to say is outside him; 32:20.319 --> 32:22.759 it's important for him to say it's outside him. 32:22.760 --> 32:27.840 Why? If it's not outside him then 32:27.835 --> 32:34.245 the sign of life that it gives and the promise of life's 32:34.250 --> 32:40.200 continuance would be his own projection and would be 32:40.198 --> 32:44.628 something liable to die with him. 32:44.630 --> 32:50.240 He wants proof that the world will go on without him, 32:50.235 --> 32:53.465 that spring will come again. 32:53.470 --> 32:59.030 The cry is a kind of elemental noise, the noise of the elements 32:59.028 --> 33:03.598 themselves and the sound of the seasons changing. 33:03.599 --> 33:08.959 It is a complaint, a lament, alarm, 33:08.963 --> 33:14.173 exclamation, and shout for joy. 33:14.170 --> 33:20.160 It's the sound of daytime returning, and with it spring at 33:20.159 --> 33:25.519 the earliest moment, a kind of emergence from winter 33:25.518 --> 33:29.768 and death. Stevens is a poet of change but 33:29.773 --> 33:35.073 of change within regenerative cycles, of which night and day 33:35.072 --> 33:40.822 and the seasons themselves are primary instances and symbols. 33:40.819 --> 33:47.529 Notice also that the world makes itself known here in and 33:47.531 --> 33:52.031 as sound. Life is something you hear. 33:52.030 --> 33:54.660 This also is like Frost. 33:54.660 --> 33:58.160 The world is again a kind of language. 33:58.160 --> 33:59.720 It's speaking to us. 33:59.720 --> 34:04.110 Stevens, in describing it through metaphors and similes 34:04.113 --> 34:08.323 and finding words for it, is performing an act of reading 34:08.324 --> 34:11.254 again, of transcription, and of translation. 34:11.250 --> 34:16.470 In particular, he is providing figurative 34:16.466 --> 34:20.636 language for understanding it. 34:20.640 --> 34:23.150 He calls the cry "scrawny." 34:23.150 --> 34:26.380 It's a great word; he uses it twice. 34:26.380 --> 34:29.390 What kinds of things are scrawny? 34:29.390 --> 34:31.820 Babies are scrawny, right? 34:31.820 --> 34:37.180 Old men are scrawny, both. 34:37.179 --> 34:41.219 Here both ideas are held together at this moment of 34:41.222 --> 34:45.992 seasonal transition when the year is old and the year is new 34:45.992 --> 34:47.692 at the same time. 34:47.690 --> 34:56.390 That single bird that gives that cry is the poet's double, 34:56.386 --> 35:01.756 a kind of echo. Maybe each are echoes of the 35:01.764 --> 35:05.314 other. The bird suggests an image of 35:05.309 --> 35:10.319 how the poet himself is integrated into the creative 35:10.319 --> 35:15.529 event that is the simple, ordinary return of the world 35:15.526 --> 35:19.636 with dawn. The poet, like the bird, 35:19.639 --> 35:25.469 is merely a chorister, a voice among other voices in a 35:25.469 --> 35:30.419 kind of harmonium that is total and whole. 35:30.420 --> 35:35.450 In this case, his "c precedes the choir"; 35:35.449 --> 35:39.959 that is, all the other voices that are going to follow this 35:39.960 --> 35:42.060 first one in the morning. 35:42.060 --> 35:44.520 That "c" tunes them. 35:44.520 --> 35:49.510 Here, alliteration is important. 35:49.510 --> 35:55.690 It links the cry and the choir and the chorister and the choral 35:55.687 --> 36:01.367 rings and the colossal sun that generates all of them in a 36:01.367 --> 36:06.027 series of rings, choral rings and vocal rings. 36:06.030 --> 36:09.300 And it's a wonderful image of synesthesia. 36:09.300 --> 36:15.820 This is light coming as sound and sound as light at once, 36:15.815 --> 36:20.115 a kind of total sensory experience. 36:20.119 --> 36:25.709 Stevens is imaging morning, imagining it as a kind of 36:25.707 --> 36:31.827 synesthetic event and as the arrival of a series of linked 36:31.833 --> 36:36.803 creativities, all derived from the colossal 36:36.802 --> 36:42.222 sun of which the poem's bold and somewhat simple, 36:42.219 --> 36:49.809 playful, and almost childlike alliteration and punning are 36:49.814 --> 36:56.614 instances, are simply forms of this choral music. 36:56.610 --> 36:59.860 The poem's linguistic play, in other words, 36:59.857 --> 37:04.187 displays the poet's power to link the things of the world 37:04.188 --> 37:08.108 through sound, to produce connections between 37:08.106 --> 37:12.146 them through words, and is itself a kind of model 37:12.148 --> 37:17.028 and a case of those choral rings through which the world is 37:17.033 --> 37:18.973 coming into being. 37:18.969 --> 37:20.929 Steven's poem, in other words, 37:20.930 --> 37:24.920 is a small version of the creative event it's describing. 37:24.920 --> 37:30.650 It is like "a new knowledge of reality," he says: 37:30.654 --> 37:36.754 "new" because refreshed, newly experienced and newly 37:36.747 --> 37:40.497 activated. It's also a knowledge of 37:40.498 --> 37:44.048 reality existing exactly in its newness. 37:44.050 --> 37:47.950 The real is what is new, what is emerging, 37:47.945 --> 37:52.025 and what is fresh, carrying change to us. 37:52.030 --> 37:57.620 Pay attention to the sun in all of Stevens's poems but 37:57.621 --> 38:03.531 especially in these late poems where the sun is a kind of 38:03.529 --> 38:09.409 mythic presence. The poet waits for the sun with 38:09.414 --> 38:15.384 the heroine Penelope in the world as meditation. 38:15.380 --> 38:21.470 Penelope there is the sun's bride, Ulysses' wife. 38:21.469 --> 38:27.169 Look at that poem as a kind of late sublime version of "Sunday 38:27.171 --> 38:31.081 Morning." Another version of the sun, 38:31.084 --> 38:37.604 of this heroic creative figure is the giant in the poem called 38:37.601 --> 38:40.701 "A Primitive Like an Orb." 38:40.699 --> 38:45.799 This is a somewhat longer poem and I'd like to look at some of 38:45.803 --> 38:47.563 its parts with you. 38:47.559 --> 38:53.059 The question in this poem, which is in your RIS packet, 38:53.061 --> 38:59.381 is really the same question as is posed by "Not Ideas About the 38:59.378 --> 39:04.058 Thing…" and that is: what is the relationship 39:04.064 --> 39:09.774 between Stevens's poem and the poems of the world? 39:09.769 --> 39:16.119 What is the link between his creativity, or our creativity, 39:16.116 --> 39:22.026 in this larger system of creation that Stevens's poetry 39:22.026 --> 39:24.916 evokes? Or in the language of this 39:24.922 --> 39:28.892 poem, what is the relationship between Stevens's poems and the 39:28.894 --> 39:31.764 "essential poem at the center of things"? 39:31.760 --> 39:36.620 Let me read the second section first. 39:36.619 --> 39:42.119 "The essential poem at the center of things" is the first 39:42.122 --> 39:44.872 line. It's kind of the theme that he 39:44.872 --> 39:46.112 will now explore. 39:46.110 --> 39:49.540 And he says about it: We do not prove the 39:49.540 --> 39:50.820 existence of the poem. 39:50.820 --> 39:54.590 39:54.590 --> 40:00.710 [We can't prove this kind of bigger thing. 40:00.709 --> 40:05.489 Rather…] It is something seen and known 40:05.489 --> 40:08.279 in lesser poems [in parts]. 40:08.280 --> 40:10.670 It is the huge, high harmony that sounds 40:10.670 --> 40:15.270 A little and a little, suddenly By means of a separate sense. 40:15.270 --> 40:21.520 It is and it Is not and, therefore, is. 40:21.520 --> 40:25.860 In the instant of speech, The breadth of an accelerando 40:25.855 --> 40:27.585 moves, Captives the being, 40:27.593 --> 40:30.813 widens--and was there. You can't grasp it; 40:30.810 --> 40:35.160 it passes. That "separate sense" is the 40:35.156 --> 40:39.396 sense that Steven's poems want to get at in their 40:39.401 --> 40:43.471 inexactnesses, sometimes in their nonsense. 40:43.470 --> 40:46.060 They're gesturing towards it. 40:46.059 --> 40:52.279 It's the existence of that separate sense which is a sense 40:52.275 --> 40:56.415 of the whole, of a kind of totality, 40:56.420 --> 41:01.860 and is affirmed precisely through its invisibility, 41:01.862 --> 41:04.042 its non-existence. 41:04.039 --> 41:09.489 "It is and it / Is not and, therefore, is." 41:09.489 --> 41:13.639 It exists in its inaccessibility, 41:13.636 --> 41:18.426 in the fact that it is always gone. 41:18.430 --> 41:20.480 It was always just there. 41:20.480 --> 41:25.560 We feel it only ever in its parts, which are synecdoches 41:25.555 --> 41:29.985 linked to the whole, like the scrawny cry and the 41:29.985 --> 41:33.395 choral rings of the colossal sun. 41:33.400 --> 41:37.740 They are parts that point to a whole. 41:37.739 --> 41:44.599 Stevens carries this idea forward then in section four. 41:44.599 --> 41:50.469 Here he is rewriting Theseus' lines from A Midsummer 41:50.465 --> 41:54.915 Night's Dream: "The poet, the lunatic, 41:54.918 --> 42:00.348 and the lover are of imagination all compact." 42:00.350 --> 42:05.180 Here he says: One poem proves another 42:05.181 --> 42:09.131 and the whole, For the clairvoyant men that 42:09.128 --> 42:11.228 need no proof: [who are they?] 42:11.230 --> 42:14.930 The lover, the believer and the poet. 42:14.929 --> 42:17.479 Their words are chosen out of their desire, 42:17.484 --> 42:22.314 [that's important in Stevens-- and remember desire is "hot" in 42:22.308 --> 42:25.018 us. What is desire? 42:25.019 --> 42:27.339 It is] The joy of language, 42:27.342 --> 42:30.292 [is it something apart from us? 42:30.290 --> 42:33.980 No it's in us] when it is themselves. 42:33.980 --> 42:37.970 With these [with these words, the words "chosen out of 42:37.972 --> 42:40.532 desire," by the lover, the believer, 42:40.534 --> 42:42.574 the poet] they celebrate the central 42:42.565 --> 42:44.065 poem, The fulfillment of 42:44.065 --> 42:45.555 fulfillments, in opulent, 42:45.559 --> 42:49.399 Last terms, the largest [and now he's going to start to get a 42:49.404 --> 42:53.524 little carried away], bulging still with more, 42:53.520 --> 42:57.210 [coma, moving on to the next stanza] 42:57.210 --> 43:00.240 Until the used-to earth and sky, and the tree 43:00.239 --> 43:03.229 And cloud, the used-to tree and used-to cloud [what was there a 43:03.230 --> 43:05.940 moment before], Lose the old uses that they 43:05.940 --> 43:08.510 made of them, And they: these men, 43:08.506 --> 43:10.566 and earth and sky, inform 43:10.570 --> 43:13.540 Each other by sharp informations, 43:13.538 --> 43:15.638 sharp, Free knowledges, 43:15.637 --> 43:19.537 secreted until then, Breaches of that which held 43:19.537 --> 43:22.827 them fast. It is 43:22.829 --> 43:28.499 As if the central poem became the world, 43:28.500 --> 43:35.030 And the world the central poem, each one the mate 43:35.030 --> 43:39.340 Of the other [and you can think about how often one finds images 43:39.336 --> 43:42.096 of wedding or of mating in 43:42.104 --> 43:47.314 Stevens, such as in "The World as Meditation"], 43:47.310 --> 43:51.000 as if summer was a spouse, Espoused each morning, 43:50.995 --> 43:54.115 each long afternoon, And the mate of summer: 43:54.117 --> 43:59.097 her mirror and her look… The essential poem begets the 43:59.104 --> 44:01.764 others. [It creates the others.] 44:01.757 --> 44:03.997 The light Of it is not a light apart, 44:04.001 --> 44:08.401 up-hill. Rather, it exists down below in 44:08.402 --> 44:11.632 all of its component parts. 44:11.630 --> 44:19.360 Let me read now sections seven and following. 44:19.360 --> 44:24.700 It is one of the great sentences in modern poetry. 44:24.699 --> 44:31.839 The poem begins with a declaration: "The central poem 44:31.836 --> 44:35.676 is the poem of the whole." 44:35.679 --> 44:41.099 This might seem to say it all, but rather, this declaration, 44:41.100 --> 44:45.970 this principle is a generative one that will now go on 44:45.970 --> 44:50.670 generating verse, much as this principle in the 44:50.665 --> 44:55.905 world goes on generating the world that we experience. 44:55.909 --> 44:57.769 The central poem is the poem of the whole, 44:57.769 --> 44:59.579 The poem of the composition of the whole, 44:59.579 --> 45:02.589 The composition of blue sea and of green, 45:02.590 --> 45:06.860 Of blue light and of green, as lesser poems, 45:06.860 --> 45:11.170 And the miraculous multiplex of lesser poems… 45:11.170 --> 45:16.260 And again, by "poems" he means individual poems; 45:16.260 --> 45:19.420 he also means individual perceptions, individual creative 45:19.424 --> 45:23.964 acts. All are forms of making in the 45:23.955 --> 45:26.695 world. "The miraculous multiplex of 45:26.700 --> 45:30.940 lesser poems" are brought then: Not merely into a whole, 45:30.940 --> 45:34.170 but a poem of The whole, the essential that 45:34.168 --> 45:38.578 is compact of its parts, The roundness that pulls tight 45:38.583 --> 45:41.943 the final ring And that which in an altitude 45:41.944 --> 45:44.454 would soar, A vis [a power], 45:44.446 --> 45:47.186 a principle or, it may be, 45:47.190 --> 45:52.310 The meditation of a principle, Or else [and here's Stevens's 45:52.313 --> 45:57.113 incredible rhetorical and imaginative ability 45:57.110 --> 46:02.000 to keep going and say "or" and go on imagining things] 46:01.997 --> 46:04.367 an inherent order active to be 46:04.369 --> 46:07.969 Itself, a nature to its natives all 46:07.969 --> 46:11.619 Beneficence, a repose, utmost repose, 46:11.619 --> 46:16.899 The muscles of a magnet aptly felt [this is what this total 46:16.900 --> 46:20.850 being, this total poem that he is imagining is 46:20.845 --> 46:22.375 like. And as he imagines it, 46:22.376 --> 46:23.236 as a totality, he 46:23.239 --> 46:25.789 starts to imagine it as a person], 46:25.789 --> 46:28.179 A giant, on the horizon, glistening, 46:28.179 --> 46:31.149 And in bright excellence adorned, crested 46:31.150 --> 46:33.330 With every prodigal, familiar fire, 46:33.329 --> 46:35.369 And unfamiliar escapades: whirroos 46:35.369 --> 46:38.309 And scintillant sizzlings such as children like, 46:38.309 --> 46:41.719 Vested in the serious folds of majesty, 46:41.719 --> 46:45.289 Moving around and behind, a following, 46:45.289 --> 46:48.109 A source of trumpeting seraphs in the eye, 46:48.110 --> 46:52.390 A source of pleasant outbursts on the ear. 46:52.390 --> 46:54.860 It's a wonderful vision. 46:54.860 --> 47:00.570 It calls to mind the great appearance, the great spectacle 47:00.565 --> 47:06.665 of the appearance of the world seen here suddenly as a kind of 47:06.672 --> 47:11.982 majestic giant figure approaching us with the folds of 47:11.977 --> 47:15.877 royal garments. That's what appearance is like 47:15.880 --> 47:19.060 for Stevens. And I think of the weather, 47:19.060 --> 47:24.220 the hills of Connecticut – a Sleeping Giant itself – as 47:24.216 --> 47:29.276 Stevens imagines a kind of experience of the landscape and 47:29.284 --> 47:34.904 of the world as humanized, a kind of humanized totality. 47:34.900 --> 47:39.520 That is, it's like a kind of generalized and abstract image 47:39.524 --> 47:44.594 of the human; an image of the human that is 47:44.592 --> 47:50.202 realized for Stevens in and through play. 47:50.199 --> 47:54.569 These garments, they're something that pleasure 47:54.565 --> 48:00.065 children and that pleasure us as children are pleasured. 48:00.070 --> 48:05.410 The giant is a kind of image of the essential poem, 48:05.414 --> 48:10.124 as he calls it, and he will go on to describe 48:10.117 --> 48:13.107 it a little bit further. 48:13.110 --> 48:16.000 He now says: Here, then [in section 48:16.001 --> 48:20.491 eleven], is an abstraction given head [what he's talking about is 48:20.486 --> 48:24.406 this general poem that's "given head" in the sense of 48:24.409 --> 48:33.329 "allowed to go and expand and have its way," but also 48:33.331 --> 48:38.651 anthropomorphized, becoming], 48:38.650 --> 48:41.740 A giant on the horizon, given arms [in fact], 48:41.739 --> 48:44.679 A massive body and long legs, stretched out, 48:44.679 --> 48:48.029 A definition with an illustration [that is, 48:48.034 --> 48:50.914 the world is at once "a definition 48:50.910 --> 48:55.740 with an illustration"], not Too exactly labelled, 48:55.735 --> 48:59.325 a large among the smalls Of it, a close, 48:59.327 --> 49:02.637 parental magnitude, At the centre on the horizon, 49:02.635 --> 49:05.675 concentrum, grave And prodigious person, 49:05.678 --> 49:10.548 patron of origins. Here, man is not created in 49:10.548 --> 49:16.088 God's image, but rather this image is of God created in 49:16.086 --> 49:20.236 man's, brought into being through play 49:20.242 --> 49:25.462 and through all the senses of sense, representing a 49:25.457 --> 49:30.567 "definition with an illustration" – a picture in 49:30.567 --> 49:34.607 word: again, abstract and concrete, 49:34.613 --> 49:40.303 an aesthetic whole that includes a kind of philosophical 49:40.296 --> 49:44.656 knowledge in it. This is what all art for 49:44.659 --> 49:47.819 Stevens aims at. He says simply: 49:47.820 --> 49:50.400 That's it. The lover writes, 49:50.401 --> 49:53.451 the believer hears, The poet mumbles and the 49:53.452 --> 49:55.982 painter sees, Each one, his fated 49:55.980 --> 50:00.570 eccentricity, As a part, [everything we do is 50:00.571 --> 50:05.151 a part, only a part] but part, but tenacious 50:05.151 --> 50:09.211 particle, Of the skeleton of the ether, 50:09.213 --> 50:11.713 [this big giant thing]... 50:11.710 --> 50:15.710 …perceptions, clods Of color, the giant of 50:15.707 --> 50:22.677 nothingness, each one [each one of us, each one thing that we 50:22.682 --> 50:26.772 do] And the giant ever changing, 50:26.772 --> 50:32.032 living in change. "That's it," meaning, 50:32.030 --> 50:35.500 that's the end of imagination. 50:35.500 --> 50:38.680 It's the sense of its ending, its terminus, 50:38.683 --> 50:42.203 and its goal. But it turns out to be no 50:42.195 --> 50:47.505 ending at all but rather an experience of a whole that is 50:47.514 --> 50:50.754 ongoing, that is an experience of change 50:50.752 --> 50:54.292 that includes death, and includes our own deaths, 50:54.289 --> 51:01.459 in a kind of totality that is ever changing and living 51:01.455 --> 51:04.425 precisely in change. 51:04.429 --> 51:15.819 Well, we'll go on to a very different poet on Wednesday – 51:15.821 --> 51:17.001 W.H.