Impulsions of unfeeling, life, limb turning
To burning cubes, to devil's dice, to ash–
What if my effigy were down there? What,
Dear god, if it were not!
If
it were nowhere in your heart!
Here I turned back. Of the terrors, the exhaustions
That beset me from then on I cannot speak.
Those are written where no one shall read them.
Nor was your heart so cleverly constructed
I needed more than time to get outside-
Time, scorned as I scorned the waiting daylight.
Before resuming my true size, there came
A place in which one could have scratched his name.
But what rights had I? For your image, somehow
Still unharmed, deep in my own saved skin
Blazed on. You might yet see it, see by it.
Nothing else mattered .. .
WALLACE STEVENS
Art of Uncertainty
HERBERT J. STERN
Somewhere near the center
of Wallace Stevens' poetic
vision are delight-the hedon–
is\"s delight in thoughts.
feelings. sounds. and colors
-and the poet's ambition to
make this delight accessible.
This book examines Stevens'
poems of the
Harmonium
period-with a special eye to
the hazards risked by a mod–
ern American artist who takes
delight seriously.
$5.95
The Recognition of
EDGAR ALLAN POE
ERIC W. CARLSON. Editor
For more than a century
Edgar Allan Poe has been a
controversial figure in world
literature.• Here Rufus Gris·
wold . T. S. Eliot. Charles
Baudelaire. Allen Tate. and
others-in more than thirty
articles. essays. poems. and
reviews-trace the develop–
ment of Poe's reputation as
poet. critic. and storyteller.
$7.50
li
THE
UNIVERSITY OF
MI CHIGAN PRESS
ANN ARBOR
James Merrill
Transcendentalism
and Its Legacy
MYRON SIMON
&
THORNTON PARSONS.
Editors
New England transcendental–
ism rewards reexamination.
Some of the challenging
critical minds of our time
explore aspects of this philo–
sophical and literary move–
ment. Essays are by Kenneth
Burke. Emerson Marks.
Glauco Cambon. Harry
Hayden Clark. Albert Gilman
and Roger Brown. Rene
Wellek. Frederic
I.
Carpenter.
Herbert W . Schneider.
Sherman Paul. Joe Lee Davis.
$6.95
