Quotes from book
Harmonium

Harmonium

Wallace Stevens

Harmonium is a book of poetry by American poet Wallace Stevens. His first book at the age of forty-four, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. This collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred . Harmonium was reissued in 1931 with three poems omitted and fourteen new poems added.Most of Harmonium's poems were published between 1914 and 1923 in various magazines, so most are now in the public domain in America and similar jurisdictions, as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act affects only works first published after 1922.

“That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Gubbinal"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: p>That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.The world is ugly,
And the people are sad..</p

“We live in an old chaos of the sun.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Sunday Morning"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Context: We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

“What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Sunday Morning"
Harmonium (1923)

“That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad..”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Gubbinal"
Harmonium (1923)

“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

Source: Harmonium

“I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Emperor of Ice Cream"
Harmonium (1923)
Source: The Collected Poems
Context: Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Snow Man"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: p>One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.</p

“O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are
Twenty men crossing a bridge
Into a village.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Metaphors of a Magnifico"
Harmonium (1923)

“Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps
Of speech which are like music so profound
They seem an exaltation without sound.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"On the Manner of Addressing Clouds"
Harmonium (1923)

“Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover —
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"O Florida, Venereal Soil"
Harmonium (1923)

“That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Gubbinal"
Harmonium (1923)

“A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

O Florida, Venereal Soil"
Harmonium (1923)

“Death is the mother of beauty”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Sunday Morning"
Harmonium (1923)

“It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" - Full text online http://boppin.com/poets/stevens.htm
"The Blackbird Is Flying, The Children Must Be Writing" Sam Swope http://www.samswope.org/work2.htm (an essay on the use of this poem as a teaching tool).
Harmonium (1923)

“A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“These
Are the music of meet resignation; these
The responsive, still sustaining pomps for you
To magnify, if in that drifting waste
You are to be accompanied by more
Than mute bare splendors of the sun and moon.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"On the Manner of Addressing Clouds"
Harmonium (1923)

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