Quotes from the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
“In your light, the head is speaking. It reads the book.
It becomes the scholar again, seeking celestial
Rendezvous,”
— from “God is Good. It is a Beautiful Night”
“The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,”
— from “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm”
“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.”
— from “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”
“With my whole body I taste these peaches,
I touch them and smell them. Who speaks?”
— from “A Dish of Peaches in Russia”
“She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.”
— from “Sunday Morning”
“[…] Sunday song
Comes from the beating of the locust’s wings, //
That do not beat by pain, but calendar,
Nor meditate the world as it goes round.”
— from “Certain Phenomena of Sound”
“I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.”
— from “The Man with the Blue Guitar”
“She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker.”
— from “The Idea of Order at Key West”
