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The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain
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There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
Wallace Stevens
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Read poems about / on: poem, home, sea
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Wallace Stevens
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Gary Witt
(3/13/2010 12:16:00 AM) |
Ceci n’est pas une pipe. This is not the poem that took the place of a mountain; this is a poem about the poem that took the place of a mountain. Reading this, I wonder if such a poem exists. If yes, then who wrote it? If no, then what is Stevens talking about?
I’m inclined to believe the “real” PTTTPOAM is a metaphor for the creative process, and the relationship between the poet and the poem (or artist-canvas, or musician-sound) . The poet creates “A place to go to in his own direction.” He/she seeks to move toward “an unexplained completion.” The poet wants to build a sanctuary (one that will “suffice”—see Of Modern Poetry) , and a place “where his inexactness/ Would discover, at last, the view toward which they [he and his inexactness] had edged.”
Writing begins by recomposing pines and shifting rocks; and ends when one is able to breathe a poem’s oxygen. It creates a place “to lie and, gazing down at the sea, / Recognize his unique and solitary home.”
It seems to me T.S. Eliot was addressing the same thing when he said, “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” TSE, Selected Essays 1917-1932, “Hamlet.”
The “set of objects” of which Eliot speaks seems close, if not identical, to the pines that Stevens has recomposed, the rocks he has shifted, and the clouds among which he has picked his way.
Stevens’ objective correlative is “The exact rock where his inexactness/ Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged, // Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea, / Recognize his unique and solitary home.”
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