IN THE SACRED PARK
91
here is a further fact: the locale of many of these poems, the sites
mentioned as relevant to feeling, are places in Florida, the Carolinas,
Cuba and Mexico, places noted in the Western hemisphere as attrac–
tive to tourists and vacationers.
So far most of what I have noted about Stevens's poems may
be experimentally confirmed. To do so one has only to consult the
texts. Now I shall risk a generalization.
The poetry of Wallace Stevens is, let it not be forgotten, wonder–
fully unlike anything else in poetry. Everything profound, says
Nietzsche, draws
aJ
limited horizon around itself. The poetry of Wal–
lace Stevens accords with that condition, being brightly definite,
most particularly what it is. There is a circle around it differentiating
it from poetry of any other kind. So far I have been following the
circle. Now I shall try to see what lies inside
it.
And so the question to which I have been leading up is as fol–
lows: What judgment about existence lies at the heart of this very
fancy language, which describes comfortable activities, catalogues
objects intriguing to the idler, which is always colorful and ever bent
on decorating, speaking in relaxed and meditative tones in the con–
text of sites attractive to vacationers? What is the content of Wallace
Stevens's poetry? What is its Idea, in the Platonic sense?
One thing I am certain of, the judgment I am looking for-it
may not even be explicitly expressed in Stevens's work-will take the
form of a decision .as to the rights of poetry with respect to life. For
the relationship of life to poetry is ever pursued as a mystery, a
puzzle, and a charm in Stevens's verses. At the outset I characterized
Stevens's attitude as that of an amateur poet. Let me now venture
to say what the content of that attitude is. Generally speaking, the
amateur poet, occupied for the most part with other affairs, re–
sponds to certain special occasions, love, death or friendship, with
works of poetry. May not Stevens, following this example in his own
special manner, have taken his cue for inspiration from that
system
of occasions
when all men put aside professionalism and toil and
address themselves to pursuits over which only the pleasure they feel
can properly preside? The moment of moral release from the obli–
gation of work may, for Stevens, have inaugurated the musical
movement from the prosaic to the poetical. The pleasure in language
taken by the poet at all times would thus become appropriate, being
