9 Wallace Stevens Quotes on Memory

Wallace Stevens quotes on memory

2. A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.

28. Upon the bank, she stood In the cool Of spent emotions. She felt, among the leaves, The dew Of old devotions.

31. Beauty is momentary in the mind - The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing. So gardens die, their meek breath scenting The cowl of winter, done repenting. So maidens die, to the auroral Celebration of a maiden's choral.

32. Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death's ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

78. Things as they are have been destroyed. Have I? Am I a man that is dead At a table on which the food is cold? Is my thought a memory, not alive? Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood And whichever it may be, is it mine?

126. Should there be a question of returning or Of death in memory's dream? Is spring a sleep? This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing Their love, this beginning, not resuming, this Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

148. Of these beginnings, gay and green, propose The suitable amours. Time will write them down.

152. It was enough for her that she remembered.

178. Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf. This arrival in the wild country of the soul, All approaches gone, being completely there, Where the wild poem is a substitute For the woman one loves or ought to love, One wild rhapsody a fake for another. You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra Hums and you say 'The world in a verse, A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains, Women invisible in music and motion and color,' After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.