Monday, June 15, 2009

Quote: Wallace Stevens

"a poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words"
from 'The Necessary Angel' 1984
Posted by at
Labels:

4 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 17, 2009 at 11:05 PM

    hmm! or, maybe don't exist except in the poet's experience or mind...? But yeah, maybe some poetry can open up new windows that can't be accessed otherwise! - evan

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 19, 2009 at 10:22 PM

    If I could find that one thing that exists without words, I will have nothing to call it. That would be true freedom from the tyrany of voice. Yet somehow this wouuld be along a path of words away from words. I would be able to see what I do not see, and see it at its clearest, just as it is and not as its name makes it be. So a poet is a poet when reaches through poetry a world without words. I like that and will shut up then and say more.
    N~onymous!

    ReplyDelete
  3. sallyJuly 4, 2009 at 11:40 PM

    Dear Anon, I'm a believer in paradoxes, so I respond to your poem which leads away from words. But consider the possibility that there are places where words and things are one. I think that is the place W.S. is pointing to.

    ReplyDelete
  4. sallyJuly 7, 2009 at 11:41 AM

    I just read this by Robert Adams, in a chapter on Mallarme; "He does not really believe that the world he is writing about exists at all. At least, if it exists, it exists only provisionally, as a convenient fiction which is dependent for its reality on the poetry which expresses/creates it." I wonder if the point is non-materiality, or the genetic potency of words? Maybe both. I think the poet's words create a paradoxical place which is simultaneously there and not there. A way to reconcile with death?

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)