“THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATEIClear water in a brilliant bowl, Pink and white carnations. The lightIn the room more like a snowy air, Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snowAt the end of winter when afternoons return.Pink and white carnations - one desiresSo much more than that. The day itselfIs simplified: a bowl of white, Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,With nothing more than the carnations there.IISay even that this complete simplicityStripped one of all one's torments, concealedThe evilly compounded, vital IAnd made it fresh in a world of white,A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,Still one would want more, one would need more,More than a world of white and snowy scents.IIIThere would still remain the never-resting mind,So that one would want to escape, come backTo what had been so long composed.The imperfect is our paradise.Note that, in this bitterness, delight,Since the imperfect is so hot in us,Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”
Wallace Stevens“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious idea turns to the idea of God.”
Harold Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious man turns to the idea of God.”
Harold Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate“After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.”
Wallace Stevens“Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.”
Wallace Stevens“In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.”
Wallace Stevens“To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.”
Wallace Stevens