I was first exposed to the poems of Wallace Stevens in my Modern American Poets class during a past undergrad semester. I fell madly in love with him. Amidst Plath, Lowell, Moore, and Bishop, Stevens stood out to me through his beautiful verse and imagery. Stevens Poem, "Sunday Morning", has really become one of my favorite poems and piece of literature for that matter. The poem is a juxtaposition between christian ideologies and finding a divine fulfillment within oneself and in nature. The speaker of the poem is a female, lounging in the late Sunday morning sun: "Complacencies of the peignoir, and late/ Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,/ And the green freedom of a cockatoo/ Upon a rug". She finds pleasure in her outstretching day, breakfast, and the natural world around her. Her mind wanders to the values, issues, and moral discoveries of Christianity and what she needs to feel divine fulfillment: "Why should she give her bounty to the dead?/ What is divinity if it can comes/ Only in silent shadows and in dreams?".The speaker urges that she can find the holiness she needs in the natural beauty of the world around her which should be viewed as heaven.
This poem has spoken to me on a deeper level and stayed with me for many years. It is a poem I revisit often and it always seems just as new and beautiful the first time I encountered it. The poem has eight stanzas which move the reader through the progression and juxtaposition of the the woman's thoughts and feelings. Below are stanzas one, two, and four, which are my favorites. Enjoy!
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
IV
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
I love the poem (especially the lines "I am content when wakened birds, / Before they fly, test the reality / Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;"). What might it mean to think of birdsong as "testing reality"? And what do we do when we awake that is similar?
ReplyDeleteI also loved the way you talked about the poem ("the holiness she needs" is a lovely phrase and an idea worth exploring).
Finally, the poem itself reminded me of a Wendell Berry poem that explores a similar idea:
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Imagery is what speaks out to me most in poetry, especially those images related to the beauty of nature and emotions. Stanza two is particularly appealing, especially the "passions of rain" and the "gusty/Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights"-- I immediately pictured a road near my home.
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