Often when I am faced with the challenge of writing a poem in the moment, I will turn for inspiration to the poetry of the great American poet, Wallace Stevens, whom I featured in an earlier post on this blog, (see, “A study of two pears”).

This morning has been no different. Initially I considered writing a few lines on the painting, “Studies for a portrait of T.S. Eliot,” by Patrick Heron, which I saw recently in the National Portrait Gallery, but I decided against this as it would require further re-reading of Eliot’s poetry and would therefore take too much time. Instead I turned to the Collected Poetry of Wallace Stevens and read two short poems. The first, “Adult Epigram,” is copied below: the second, “Men Made Out of Words,” is available on the internet.

What one learns from the work of Stevens is that poetry is many things and that no single definition can do it justice. Today he reminds me that poetry is often human revery, propositions which come to us as we meditate on our experiences, propositions torn by our dreams amid the clash of sparring realities: nevertheless he concludes that the whole human race is a poet, the whole race being made out of words, adding that poetry may not always make immediate sense but that this is not the fault of poetry and it is a strength rather than a weakness.

ADULT EPIGRAM

The romance of the precise is not the elision
Of the tired romance of imprecision.
It is the ever-never-changing same,
An appearance of Again, the diva-dame.

Wallace Stevens

What Lies Beneath

What lies beneath
        the veneer of words
what thoughts
        what feelings
what expectations ?
        I read myself
I have become
        my own book
my own text
        my autumn and
my winter months
        my future and my past
all wrapped into this present
        These are mere words
and yet I feel them
        at times as caresses
at times as mortal wounds
        the casket of my body
wracked with discomforts :
        and yet hope flowers still
desire and love
        well up within me

Life and its propositions
         all in the mind
I hear the wood-doves sing
        against the backdrop of waters
that rush over the weir
         I hear the howl of the wind
lashing against my skin

If there is justice in the world
        where is it concealed ?
If there is peace
        who has purloined it ?
If there is love
        who will reveal it
and live it to the hilt untainted
        by niggard judgments
and petty jealousies ?

Poetry is the sense that the world
        does not always make : it cuts
to the quick and is of the essence
        I once glimpsed
in the shallow book of her affections
        the facsimile of a smile
the feigned beauty of a gesture
        sensed the sullen softness
of a kiss never meant to be given
        beheld a bed of perfumed lace
and Egyptian linen made ready
        for the maze of love
only for that love to be denied

John Lyons

Note: this poem is slightly revised from the text posted earlier this morning.