This morning I saw a Pidgeon high up spiral down, wings v'd with the force of its fall into the shadow of a canyon where a river runs. Other pigeons flew out to meet it as it leveled out and they all flew off together. Then I read something about entropy in The Marginalian, Maria Popovas wonderful work similar in vein to Wallace Stevens work that you give us: 'We live in an old chaos of the sun.' We are only alive because our Sun is burning out.
Funny, how that happens, how several moments or readings can come together in a way that reinforce each other. I too have been a fan of Maria's essays going back to when it was called Brain Pickings. Thank you for the link to the article on Auden and entropy, which I had missed before.
the transience of beauty intensifies its pleasure .... I have to think about that more. As you wrote, it also intensifies brutality and suffering. But alas too, what is beauty? I go along with Shakespeare, that beauty is but that which dies. Flowers are beautiful not for their colors alone but the fact they will die and we sense that, call that "beauty". But I digress ... I always appreciated Stevens as a craftsman and for his thoughts about the imagination and where it crashes into metaphysics. Glad to see others do His Necessary Angel is a good read so long as you consider his time and place. A forerunner to Eliot, in a way, cerebral poetry. I often compare him to Czeslaw Milosz - though lots is lost in translation there. Stevens too - a great example of a working poet. How poetry isn't an academic exercise but the breath of a woman, a man living their life, day to day.
Thank you, David. I always enjoy hearing what you have to say. I have Steven's two-volume biography by Richardson, but not Necessary Angels. Milosz is a good comparison. I can't say I agree with you about beauty though. It's the color and scent and shape of flowers that I find beautiful, and even their fading can sometimes seem beautiful, but I don't think its the transitory nature that contributes to or makes them beautiful. They would be so even if they lasted forever. It intensifies that sense of melancholy, I suppose, that sweet sadness, which I suppose has its own attraction, but that seems more emotional and less beautiful to me. Anyway, it's always fun to have these sorts of discussion, and deeper delving into the nature of things.
I think so too. I love his idea of The Supreme Fiction and his metaphysical views that seem almost Zen-like. And maybe are. Buddhism was one of his influences. He takes the observation of nature to a whole new level too.
This morning I saw a Pidgeon high up spiral down, wings v'd with the force of its fall into the shadow of a canyon where a river runs. Other pigeons flew out to meet it as it leveled out and they all flew off together. Then I read something about entropy in The Marginalian, Maria Popovas wonderful work similar in vein to Wallace Stevens work that you give us: 'We live in an old chaos of the sun.' We are only alive because our Sun is burning out.
www.themarginalian.org/2022/04/07/the-more-loving-one-auden-universe-in-verse/?mc_cid=7840f6cb57&mc_eid=a0038a8
Funny, how that happens, how several moments or readings can come together in a way that reinforce each other. I too have been a fan of Maria's essays going back to when it was called Brain Pickings. Thank you for the link to the article on Auden and entropy, which I had missed before.
the transience of beauty intensifies its pleasure .... I have to think about that more. As you wrote, it also intensifies brutality and suffering. But alas too, what is beauty? I go along with Shakespeare, that beauty is but that which dies. Flowers are beautiful not for their colors alone but the fact they will die and we sense that, call that "beauty". But I digress ... I always appreciated Stevens as a craftsman and for his thoughts about the imagination and where it crashes into metaphysics. Glad to see others do His Necessary Angel is a good read so long as you consider his time and place. A forerunner to Eliot, in a way, cerebral poetry. I often compare him to Czeslaw Milosz - though lots is lost in translation there. Stevens too - a great example of a working poet. How poetry isn't an academic exercise but the breath of a woman, a man living their life, day to day.
Thank you, David. I always enjoy hearing what you have to say. I have Steven's two-volume biography by Richardson, but not Necessary Angels. Milosz is a good comparison. I can't say I agree with you about beauty though. It's the color and scent and shape of flowers that I find beautiful, and even their fading can sometimes seem beautiful, but I don't think its the transitory nature that contributes to or makes them beautiful. They would be so even if they lasted forever. It intensifies that sense of melancholy, I suppose, that sweet sadness, which I suppose has its own attraction, but that seems more emotional and less beautiful to me. Anyway, it's always fun to have these sorts of discussion, and deeper delving into the nature of things.
He's one of the greatest poets. Nature often takes us within ourselves in unexpected ways.
I think so too. I love his idea of The Supreme Fiction and his metaphysical views that seem almost Zen-like. And maybe are. Buddhism was one of his influences. He takes the observation of nature to a whole new level too.