This wonderful diagram outlines some of the stranger working methods of various writers (and one or two composers and painters), in and around the home.
Demosthenes shaving half his head and Cheever stripping to his underwear in the basement are probably my two favourites. Might give them a try – but in combo?
Click to enlarge.
The Glass of Water is another of Wallace Stevens’ poems that has buried itself into my gut, heart, and brain and taken root, slowly destroying and rebuilding me.
That’s a little dramatic perhaps, but Stevens’ poetry does tend to have something like this effect on me.
I’ve read The Glass of Water a few times now, and the moment that seems the most perfect to me is that where ‘light / is the lion that comes down to drink’. It’s so perfect because of its specificity (I think of a tongue come to lap the water, and of a golden coat and golden mane, of raw power, and of the ruddy features and frothy jaws as next described) and also its composit nature (it is all of these things at once).
The poem captures perfectly ‘the lion’s’ embroiled place in the metaphorical and metaphysical stratum that Stevens explores. It is the beast of thought, the ruddy power of any moment, the thirst to drink of and comprehend the meaning of each moment.
Stevens is the master of slowing down time to inspect its every composite part; and the composite parts of objects and thoughts as they relate to each other and across time.
THE GLASS OF WATER
That the glass would melt in heat,
That the water would freeze in cold,
Shows that this object is merely a state,
One of many, between two poles. So,
In the metaphysical, there are these poles.
Here in the centre stands the glass. Light
Is the lion that comes down to drink. There
And in that state, the glass is a pool.
Ruddy are his eyes and ruddy are his claws
When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws
And in the water winding weeds move round.
And there and in another state–the refractions,
The metaphysica, the plastic parts of poems
Crash in the mind–But, fat Jocundus, worrying
About what stands here in the centre, not the glass,
But in the centre of our lives, this time, this day,
It is a state, this spring among the politicians
Playing cards. In a village of the indigenes,
One would have still to discover. Among the dogs and dung,
One would continue to contend with one’s ideas.
NIN gear is probably unlikely.
What is much more likely, to the point of probably having already been put on order by significant persons in my life, are these two books:
I actually need Wallace Stevens right now. I don’t know why. It’s like the craving for a particular type of beer, a particular satisfying goodness… a really smooth treat.
I’ve been reading a bit of poetry of late, and I admit that the following epiphany (had while reading Wallace Stevens in the bath – bubbles – with a bit of moody Russian classical playing) may not be amazing or even make real sense, but it still stands and stands well, to my mind:
Reading poetry is like living. The comprehension processes, for me, are very similar. And that’s a lot of the reason why I like reading poetry.
Simple.
Here’s some of what has transported me of late (in-text links where possible, otherwise reproduced below):
Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz
Wallace Stevens
The truth is that there comes a time
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound.
There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows.
Too many waltzes have ended. And then
There’s that mountain-minded Hoon,
For whom desire was never that of the waltz,
Who found all form and order in solitude,
For whom the shapes were never the figures of men.
Now, for him, his forms have vanished.
There is order in neither sea nor sun.
The shapes have lost their glistening.
There are these sudden mobs of men,
These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,
Except to be happy, without knowing how,
Imposing forms they cannot describe,
Requiring order beyond their speech.
Too many waltzes have ended. Yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire.
Too many waltzes—The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.
Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music
Will unite these figures of men and their shape
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows.
