“The west wind was the music, the motion, the force
To which the swans curveted, a will to change,
A will to make iris frettings on the blank.”

— Wallace Stevens

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: Like a page of music, like an upper air,
Like a momentary color, in which swans
Were seraphs, were saints, were changing essences. The west wind was the music, the motion, the force
To which the swans curveted, a will to change,
A will to make iris frettings on the blank.

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Wallace Stevens 278

American poet 1879–1955

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