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Friday, April 10, 2015

What’s poetry for Stevens?

A short sampling: “Poetry is a purging of the world’s poverty and change and evil and death,” a poem is “a meteor,” “a pheasant,” “a cafe,” “the disengaging of (a) reality,” “a health,” “the body,” “a cure of the mind,” “a renovation of experience,” “a pheasant disappearing into the brush,” “a search for the inexplicable,” “a revelation of the elements of appearance,” “the scholar’s art,” “a nature created by the poet.” “The poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.” “In poetry you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.” And of course, “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully”

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