Quote #69

And the color, the overcast blue Of the air, in which the blue guitar Is a form, described but difficult, And I am merely a shadow hunched Above the arrowy, still string, The maker of a thing yet to be made; The color like a thought that grows Out of a mood, the tragic robe Of the actor, half his gesture, half His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk Sodden with his melancholy words, The weather of his stage, himself.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. Struggling toward impassioned choirs, Crying among the clouds, enraged By gold antagonists in air - I know my lazy, leaden twang Is like th…
  2. Behold The approach of him whom none believes, Whom all believe that all believe, A pagan in a varnished car.
  3. It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea. When shall I come to say of the sun, It is a sea; it shares noth…
  4. Slowly the ivy on the stones Becomes the stones. Women become The cities, children become the fields And men in waves become the sea.
  5. The thinking of art seems final when The thinking of god is smoky dew.
  6. The sea returns upon the men, The fields entrap the children, brick Is a weed and all the flies are caught, Wingless and withered, but livi…
  7. Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry, Of the torches wisping in the underground, Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.…
  8. The blue guitar And I are one.

All Wallace Stevens quotes