Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE HIGH-TONED OLD CHRISTIAN WOMAN, by WALLACE STEVENS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Women - Old Age | ||||||||
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That's clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began. Allow, Therefore, that in the planetary scene Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed, Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade, Proud of such novelties of the sublime, Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk, May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres. This will make widows wince. But fictive things Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE GREAT BLACK HERON by DENISE LEVERTOV BOUTS RIMES IN PRAISE OF OLD MAIDS by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD DONATELLO'S MAGDALENE by LINDA PASTAN OLD LADIES' HOME by SYLVIA PLATH AT DEEP MIDNIGHT by MINNIE BRUCE PRATT ADA RUEL by RANSOM. JOHN CROWE THE ANGEL AND THE LITTLE OLD LADY by ROBERT LAX AN EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTIES by RUTH STONE |
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