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Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

The Plot Against the Giant

First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
 
Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
 
Third Girl
Oh, la... le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Wallace Stevens...
It Must Give Pleasure

To sing jubilas at exact, accustom… To be crested and wear the mane of… And so, as part, to exult with its… To speak of joy and to sing of it,… The shoulders of joyous men, to fe…
Contrary Theses (II)

One chemical afternoon in mid-autu… When the grand mechanics of earth… Even the leaves of the locust were… He walked with his year-old boy on… The sun shone and the dog barked a…
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. I was of three minds, Like a tree
Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion

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The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David
To an Old Philosopher in Rome

On the threshold of heaven, the fi… Become the figures of heaven, the… Of men growing small in the distan… Singing, with smaller and still sm… Unintelligible absolution and an e…
Sunday Morning

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The Planet on the Table

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Peter Quince at the Clavier

Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sound… On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound; And thus it is that what I feel,
What is Divinity

What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in drea… Shall she not find in comforts of… In pungent fruit and bright, green… In any balm or beauty of the earth…
Poem Written at Morning

A sunny day’s complete Poussinian… Divide it from itself. It is this… And it is not. By metaphor you paint A thing. Thus, the pineapple was…
Two Figures in Dense Violet Light

I had as lief be embraced by the p… As to get no more from the moonlig… Than your moist hand. Be the voice of the night and Flo… Use dasky words and dusky images.
Six Significant Landscapes

An old man sits In the shadow of a pine tree In China. He sees larkspur, Blue and white,
Metaphors of a Magnifico

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bri… Into twenty villages, Or one man
Bantams in Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caf… Of tan with henna hackles, halt! Damned universal cock, as if the s… Was blackamoor to bear your blazin… Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the per…
The Death of a Soldier

Life contracts and death is expect… As in season of autumn. The soldier falls. He does not become a three-days pe… Imposing his separation,



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