Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
—1923
Andrew Wyeth. Wind from the Sea. 1947.
Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1879. After graduating from Harvard, he became a lawyer and rose to be vice-president of his company. He woke up early every day, read for a few hours, and then composed poems in his head while walking to and from work. In that way he produced some of the most revolutionary and abstract poetry of the 20th century. Almost no one at his office knew that he was a poet, even after he became famous in the literary world. Stevens developed the idea of poetry as a force taking the place of religion. His collections include Harmonium (1923), The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937), and Auroras of Autumn (1950). He died in Hartford, Connecticut in 1955.
Notebook in the Rain 