She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
— from The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens (Click Here To Read The Complete Poem)
“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
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.
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.
“The final belief is to believe in a fiction,
which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else.
The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction
and that you believe in it willingly.”
Hotel Table Lamp (2001) — Computer Painting by kenne
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.
— 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.)
Abandoned Desert House — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The Sea of Cortas — Image by kenne
Fenceline: “The Look of Things, Left What We Felt” — Image by kenne
Male Eastern Bluebird in Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
An Aspen Fall — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Arizona Sister Butterfly — Image by kenne
Bird On A Stick — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Grasshopper Bouquet — Photo-Artistry be kenne
Rose Lake, Santa Catalina Mountains — Digital Art by kenne
Mixed Media Art II — Digital Art by kenne
Desert Hibiscus — Image by kenne
Hotel Table Lamp (2001) — Computer Painting by kenne
