Quote #98

The poem, through candor, brings back a power again That gives a candid kind to everything.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. The poem refreshes life so that we share, For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies Belief in an immaculate beginning And sends us, w…
  2. Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
  3. The monastic man is an artist.The philosopher Appoints man's place in music, say, today. But the priest desires. The philosopher desires. A…
  4. The first idea was not our own. Adam In Eden was the father of Descartes And eve made air the mirror of herself, Of her sons and of her dau…
  5. So poisonous Are the ravishments of truth, so fatal to The truth itself, the first idea becomes The hermit in a poet's metaphors, Who comes…
  6. The clouds preceded us. There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began, Venerable and articulate and c…
  7. Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was A name for something that never could be named. There was a project for the sun and is. There is a…
  8. We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.

All Wallace Stevens quotes