Quotes By Author: Wallace Stevens
“There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.”
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“I placed a jar in Tennessee and round it was upon a hill.”
“A poem is a meteor.”
“A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order.These two things are one.”
“Poetry is the scholar’s art.”
“Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.”
“The Poem That Took The Place Of A MountainThere it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactness Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.”
“Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.”
“One must read poetry with one’s nerves.”
“We live in an old chaos of the sun.”
“I do not know which to prefer,The beauty of inflectionsOr the beauty of innuendosThe blackbird whistlingOr just after.”
“After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.”
“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”