Monday, December 30, 2019

Imagination in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens Essay example

What are â€Å"Castratos of moon-mash?† Who are these seemingly real but only partially embodied figures, which Wallace Stevens mentions almost in passing at line three in his poem, â€Å"Men Made Out of Words.† As readers, how are we to understand this short ambivalent phrase, which while confounding us appears to answer the question raised in the previous two lines: â€Å"What should we be without the sexual myth, / The human revery or the poem of death† (1-2). Stevens does not elaborate on the image of the moon-mashed castratos he has just presented, but instead using a hyphen formulates and finishes the relatively short ten-line poem. One can argue that this second part of the poem could even be a separate strophe from the lines already noted,†¦show more content†¦Stevens makes this fact apparent from the beginning of the poem, when he notes not only â€Å"human revery† but also â€Å"the sexual myth† and the â€Å"poem of death† (1). Therefore, these defined formulations are only categories of a greater whole, which remains unmentioned in the poem. In deliberating on Stevens’s poems, we can come to understand this encompassing whole as the imagination, which impels an individual to make â€Å"eccentric propositions† about his or her life and fate (4-5, 10). In his essay, Imagination as Value, Stevens reminds us that â€Å"the imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things [†¦] it is the source not of a single value but of as many values as can reside in the possibilities of things† (136). With these words in mind and from what we have already noted in â€Å"Men Made Out of Words,† we can assert that the â€Å"possibilities of things,† mentioned in the essay, are the same as the reveries, poems, and myths, hinted at in the poem; however, one needs to clarify the difference between the ‘possibilities of things’ and the ‘thingsà ¢â‚¬â„¢ themselves. For Stevens, the imagination is ‘metaphysical’ or something which resides in the abstract but at the time it serves as â€Å"the only clue to reality [i.e. things]† (137); therefore it is through the imagination that reality derives its possibilities i.e. its myths, reveries, and poems. In Stevens argument, the imagination is the liberatorShow MoreRelatedA Force of Nature: Imagination in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery1602 Words   |  7 Pagesseems to him to be poetry at that time† (The necessary vii). What Stevens is suggesting here is that a poet must find a particular voice among other voices –other poets– and that his voice will be significant only if it intends to be a contribution to the theory of poetry, in the sense that they â€Å"are disclosures of poetry, not disclosures of definitions of poetry† (Ibid). 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Majority of them will read and enjoy all types of poem, but they have their own opinions. The new, has to be truly unique to the author and to the time period. Shakespeare still had plays that we study, but it is hard to comprehend the message behind the words. Worlds change and theRead MoreSummary Of Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird783 Words   |  4 PagesI chose to write about Wallace Stevens’ â€Å"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird†. This poem spoke to me because of the similarities to â€Å"Blackbird† by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. It is very interesting to examine the relationship between music and poetry. Songs are poetry in one of its most popular forms. Prior to this class, I had a deep familiarity with the song â€Å"Blackbird† but was completely unaware of the poem by Stevens. The title of the poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

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