Mexican Hat Wildflower (White Mountains, Arizona) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Wallace Stevens
Tom Turner (08/29/09) — Image by kenne
With so much of my knowledge of literature I was taught by my brother, Tom. In an April 26, 2003 note from him, he wrote:
“Hey . . . you
Metaphysical degenerates . . .
Bantered alone by impulse . . .
Here I am attempting to essay a few
coherent thoughts . . . God it’s risky!
‘God and the imagination are one.’
I am in the midst of trying to
memorize a poem . . . ‘Final Soliloquy
of The Interior Paramour’ by
Wallace Stevens . . . never mind why.”
Tom goes on to write about a piece by George Steiner
on memorization amid the technological revolution
where media is ubiquitous:
“The danger is that the text or music will lose
what physics calls its ‘critical mass,’ its implosive
powers within the echo chambers of the self.”
He continued — “I can really be in awe of
Shakespearean stage people in recitation
of exact lines!! Read closely . . .”
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
that our devices still are overthrown:
our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
(The Player King’s Crucial Speech in the Play
Within the Play — Act 3, Scene 2, 183-209-Hamlet)
I probably don’t need to tell you that Tom
never memorized the Wallace poem.
Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
— Wallace Stevens
Geometric Grange Art by kenne
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one …
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
— Wallace Stevens
Abandoned Desert House — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/77051
The Sea of Cortas — Image by kenne
Fenceline: “The Look of Things, Left What We Felt” — Image by kenne
A Postcard from the Volcano
Male Eastern Bluebird in Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
An Aspen Fall — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In a letter dated 4/26/03, by brother Tom wrote:
“I am in the midst of ‘trying’ to memorize a poem . . .
‘Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour’ by Wallace Stevens . . .
never mind why . . .
although the exercise was triggered by a piece by
George Steiner in which he wrote:
‘The danger is that the text or music will lose what physics
calls its ‘critical mass,’ its implosive powers within
the echo chambers of the self.'”
Tom was aware that what is committed to memory
and susceptible to recall constitutes “The Blast of The Self,”
an intensity of outward attention — interest, curiosity,
a healthy obsession was a motivation stronger
even than love or hatred or fear.
— kenne
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Arizona Sister Butterfly — Image by kenne
On the Manner of Addressing Clouds
Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps
Of speech which are like music so profound
They seem an exaltation without sound.
Funest philosophers and ponderers,
Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
So speech of your processionals returns
In the casual evocations of your tread
Across the stale, mysterious seasons. These
Are the music of meet resignation; these
The responsive, still sustaining pomps for you
To magnify, if in that drifting waste
You are to be accompanied by more
Than mute bare splendors of the sun and moon.
— Wallace Stevens
Bird On A Stick — Photo-Artistry by kenne
―
Grasshopper Bouquet — Photo-Artistry be kenne
— Wallace Stevens
Rose Lake, Santa Catalina Mountains — Digital Art by kenne
— from At the Grave of Wallace Stevens by Edward Hirsch
Mixed Media Art II — Digital Art by kenne
— Wallace Stevens
Desert Hibiscus — Image by kenne
Hotel Table Lamp (2001) — Computer Painting by kenne
— from Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens
(Shared on this day as we stay overnight in Ft. Stockton on our return trip from Houston to Tucson.)
Becoming is Superior to Being 