Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

[justinmjones10]

Is this Stevens himself reading?

[brychar66]

@justinmjones10 Hehe, no it's me! Regards, Charles

[mackjay2]

A perfect reading of this great poem, the beauty of the language is almost overwhelming just to read it, but his voice and tone add even more

[Nowekian]

i've almost memorized this poem... i has to be my favorite by far.... since i was in school.

[trisoctehedron]

I just listened to The Waste Land. I came to revisit this as an antidote.

I take it that Eliot recoiled from the modernist situation in horror, while Stevens came along and accepted it in magnificence.

[loveyoutodeathbut]

Thank you so much for sharing this.

[slitheringinterstate]

What's so great about Wallace Stevens also, is the randomness of his greatness.

We're talking about a guy who spent the first half of his life in relative obscurity as an insurance adjuster in Pennsylvania, and then quietly wrote some of the 20th centuries most deeply moving language, so replete with modernity and understated elegance.

Perhaps that's when the mind is best suited to write great lines; when it isn't focused on the greatness of self, but rather the greatness around it.

[brychar66]

I agree with you entirely. Same applies to Eliot who worked as a bank clerk.

[bbethany7]

A bank clerk? He worked as an account executive at Lloyds

and later as a director of Faber&Faber publishing co.

[bbethany7]

Stevens worked as a lawyer for a Hartford, Conn,

insurance firm his whole working life. His colleagues knew

nothing of his career as a poet.

[eadavisl]

Beautiful. One of my favorite poems. But, unfortunately, you had to leave out some of my favorite parts. For example:

"At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings."

[brychar66]

yes you are right - that particular section is tremendous; but listen again, my friend, it is there, at the end! 5.47 to the end.

[slitheringinterstate]

I remember a professor's comment at college regarding Wallace Stevens, that makes more and more sense as I age, having heard poets try to outdo each other along verbose and spectacular fronts.

He said "There has never been a poet, who could move people so deeply, using almost only words everyone knows."

So true...Stevens rarely used esoteric language...rather, he used common language, with esoteric phrasing.

He could build a masterpiece with the tools of a laymen...so clever.

[brychar66]

Sure. And in those three lines the magic is in the adjectives.

[grobbledonk]

I greatly admire Stevens, but the point about simple language is true of most of the strong poets in English, Shakespeare expempted. In fact, Stevens had the ludicrous notion that English was Gallic at base, and certainly liked to display the peacock's tail of his diction.

[trisoctehedron]

I first heard these last lines in college at 20, and I knew they were great. Now I see their greatness is beautiful and devastating at the same time. Because I'm old now, I can understand the poem's full emotional content.

[grobbledonk]

Thise lines aren't missed out. Perhaps you switched it off early!

[wildgal43]

Yes, this is possibly the greatest poem of the 20th century. I had a professor who taught it at Hunter that made me realize what a powerful gift it can be to expose and explore a poem together.

[brychar66]

It's certainly the most wonderful poem. Sorry I couldn't read it all. Chas.

[king7wood]

A most wonderful reading of a favorite poem...

[songoftherushes]

fine choice and i like the matisse...can i ask if there is some specific connection between matisse and stevens?

[brychar66]

Nothing specific,it just started with the woman in the dressing gown (or out of it!) so I carried on with the Matisse theme. Regards, Charles.

[dianasatyr]

I have no words. He used all the best ones.

[Sutch74]

Beautiful poem.....

[boynamedblue]

great images. great poem.

[extitan9]

One of the greatest poems of the 20th century.

[brychar66]

Cheers! He's very good, supposedly influenced by the French Symbolist poets who I love in any case so that's fine by me!

[MightyMelmoth]

Wow! That was like an incantation ... I have never yet read Wallace Stevens but I shall. Thanks.