Wallace Stevens: Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Is this a complicated poem? I'm not sure. The words in themselves can seem complicated; at least when English is not your first language.

Is this a good poem? Yes. It keeps deepening to me, and I suspect it will for a while.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

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.

Wallace Stevens

***

In this poem the form strikes me more than in most poems. Triplets, two times three. In a poem with a content which could be described by the word 'holy' this does not seem like a coincidence; the power/magic of three being a recurrent theme of many religions and mystic traditions.

However, this is more about the meaning of the words written than the mere set-up. Although, as we know, those things are connected — especially in poetry.

I love the title. So .... unpoetic. It's a mouthful. And yet it is inviting, in a mind-tickling way.

Some images highlight what seems to be an underlying theme: "Out of this same light, out of the central mind" (from closing triplet); We say God and the imagination are one... / How high that highest candle lights the dark". Not to mention the opening line, so inviting and soothing: "Light the first light of evening". Light, from the central mind, a central place that shines forth. This awakens warmness and softheartedness in me; as well as a clearheadedness. This clear head seems to have light as its origin. Heart and head springing from the common ground of light -- ah, the lightness it brings!

In the same vein, this poem brings a translucence to me, the reader. The sentences and words seem to light up from within, or from an underlying source — like LED wired up deep down underneath the letters on the screen, on the paper or in your mind.

Also the mention of "the ultimate good" has a light and warm feeling to it. As well as clear, sharp and airy; domains often connected to the mind. There is an intellectual vein running through the whole of this poem, like so much of Wallace Stevens's poetry.

And underlying all of this again is the nonduality of light—dark, inside—outside and indeed every other string of words and concepts struck by Stevens' words in this moment of space. How do you  mention one without sounding the strings of the other concept, the counterconcept, so to speak?

Stepping forward is also the twosome "It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, / Out of all the indifferences, into one thing". See, there's like an underlying (again) source for everything that he is tapping these words from. This poem in many ways seems like an emanation of a certain point of light that he seems to have been in contact with.

Again with the wholeness, oneness:

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

This is so heart-, mind- and being-tickling! I love those words and the place they come from. "An order, a whole, a knowledge". Oneness, in a few of its facets.

So to repeat the opening question: Is this a complicated poem? No. See through to the point it springs from, and complicated isn't a word that arises with this poem. Translucent, maybe. Or light. Or even simple.

Or what do you think?

Fluttering thoughts

A short installation here as I am waiting to have a proper post ready. Which means working, really. Not waiting.

Leave your front door and your back door open.
Allow your thoughts to come and go.
Just don’t serve them tea.

---Shunryu Suzuki

David Whyte: Ten years later

David Whyte has visited this blog earlier, in his poem The Well of Grief, as well as his poem called Faith.

This poem, called Ten Years Later, shares an underlying depth and silence with the other two. This is what most draws me to his writing.

It is in the latter half of this poem that I feel the almost magical depth and quiet when waking at the edge of the unknown is floating up through his words. The first half more serves as preparation and analogy to the latter. Which of course means that it is completely necessary to and part of the depth of the ending, laying the ground for our mind, heart and being to take in the whole.

Let's see the poem first:

TEN YEARS LATER

When the mind is clear
and the surface of the now still,
now swaying water

slaps against
the rolling kayak,

I find myself near darkness,
paddling again to Yellow Island.

Every spring wildflowers
cover the grey rocks.

Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowers

as if remembering them
by touch alone.

A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.

Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I've learned these years,

how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.

Innocence is what we allow
to be gifted back to us
once we've given ourselves away.

There is one world only,
the one to which we gave ourselves
utterly, and to which one day

we are blessed to return.

***

This is a rather long poem if haiku and the like model the way you prefer poetic expression -- understatement and synthesis of language, image and understanding being key terms. Still, if you hold it in your mind, it feels like a haiku. It speaks from the same place throughout, beginning with more earthy expressions and then honing it in to the bone of the (dark) matter.

The aloneness in the centre of the flowers is a trembling, goosebumply beautiful image that almost makes me cry -- certainly shivering. I can understand so well what he means when he says this used to frighten him in youth. Cold yet lovely pearls in the centre of a flowering beauty limited to a short summer, hinting of a great aloneness and a terrific and terrifying beauty. Beauty and innocence can be hard to bear.

And then how the 'I' after a break of all the years until present knows this loneliness from inside. With it a certain nobleness comes, I feel; the nobility of being human, the nobility that lies in humanness. Big, puffy words, perhaps, but this I feel to be true. Being human -- or 'the human condition', if you like, includes the sheerest simplicity, the purest innocence, the deepest aloneness. And in this state of humanness we can sink into the quiet and depth of knowing ourselves from within, which usually is accompanied by the aloneness Whyte refers to.

'How to be alone'. How simple and beautiful these words are, and almost blurred by the surrounding sentences in this poem. "One small thing / I've learned these years, / how to be alone, / and at the edge of aloneness / how to be found by the world." This ending, this rounding up and padding of the central statement 'how to be alone' is so ...simple, clear, gentle. Three words which I find to be connected with 'humanness'. Aloneness is important and necessary in order to know oneself and function from a substantial and personal place, but so also is 'being found by the world' -- particularly important, I think, when you have lowered yourself into that quiet and spacious place of personal knowing and recognition.

The interplay between aloneness and being found by the world. That is paramount in these lives of ours.