Wallace Stevens Appreciation Friday

I've arbitrarily decided Friday will be Wallace Stevens appreciation day here at A Supposedly Fun Thing. I'm a fan of declaring tradition by fiat--in school we had "Gay Sweater Thursday", "Pu Pu Platter Tuesday", and "Dress Like It's 1986" parties at the end of every month, for instance.

As for Wallace Stevens in particular? I picked up a couple of vintage editions of his poetry at Myopic Books in Wicker Park (the land of silver spoons and paper plates) recently and remembered how much I love his work. It's like in His Girl Friday when the grizzled old newspaper man picks up a column tossed off by the film's heroine, reads it admiringly, shakes his head, and says "It'll do until something else comes along." Stevens, too, will do until something else comes along.

Here's a poem my father used to read to me when I was a kid. I knew all the words long before I knew what all the words meant, and knew what all the words meant long before I knew what the poem meant, but I always knew how the poem made me feel--thrilled, unsettled, melancholy and faintly maudlin. I'm not sure what there is about which to feel maudlin when you're 8, but part of the genius of Stevens was in his ability to evoke feelings the reader may or may not have had any right to feel (and feelings Stevens himself may never have felt in his whole life).

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.