Quote

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

Wallace Stevens

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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Holy
Orange
Freedom
Chair
Oranges
Upon
Chairs
Dissipate
Coffee
Mingle
Ancient
Caffeine
Green
Hush
Sacrifice
Complacency
Late
Sunny

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Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
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In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.
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I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
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It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.
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The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book.
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Freedom is like a man who kills himself Each night, an incessant butcher, whose knife Grows sharp in blood.
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Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.
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Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.
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The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.
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The wind, Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry, Came bluntly thundering, more terrible Than the revenge of music on bassoons.
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All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.
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The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have.
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We live in an old chaos of the sun.
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We say This changes and that changes. Thus the constant Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause In a universe of inconstancy.
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Metaphor creates a new reality from which the original appears to be unreal.
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If sex were all, then every trembling hand Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
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