Life Is Motion
"Life is Motion" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.[1]
Overview
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico,
Danced around a stump.
They cried,
"Ohoyaho,
Ohoo"...
Celebrating the marriage
Of flesh and air.
This playful poem is notable for its introducing exclamatory sounds, and for evoking the American frontier and the simple joy of calico-clad Bonnie and Josie. Stevens returns to Oklahoma, the venue for the first poem in Harmonium, "Earthy Anecdote", which charged a local scene with an aura of mystery. "Life is Motion" by contrast reduces locale to basics, suggesting in its own way that the poet must move beyond it as Crispin did in "The Comedian as the Letter C", even as this marriage of flesh and air is celebrated.
A symbolist reading would understand the flesh as reality, the air as imagination. The poem celebrates Stevens's task, to engage his imagination with reality.
A philosophically ambitious reading would view it as a poetic expression of a process philosophy like that of Alfred North Whitehead.
One critic wrote: "Of the modern poets, Wallace Stevens seem to me the most successful creator of artistic experiences which hum with the energy and motion of life."[2] See also "Metaphors of a Magnifico", where the debt to Cubist studies of motion is particularly evident.
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Notes
References
- Blessing, Richard. "Wallace Stevens and the Necessary Reader: A Technique of Dynamism." In Twentieth Century Literature (1972, Volume 18, Number 4).
- Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
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- "Earthy Anecdote"
- "Invective Against Swans"
- "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"
- "The Plot Against the Giant"
- "Infanta Marina"
- "Domination of Black"
- "The Snow Man"
- "The Ordinary Women"
- "The Load Of Sugar-Cane"
- "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle"
- "Nuances of a Theme by Williams"
- "Metaphors of a Magnifico"
- "Ploughing on Sunday"
- "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges"
- "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores"
- "Fabliau of Florida"
- "Doctor of Geneva"
- "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile"
- "The Comedian as the Letter C"
- "From the Misery of Don Joost"
- "O Florida, Venereal Soil"
- "Last Looks at the Lilacs"
- "The Worms at Heaven's Gate"
- "The Jack-Rabbit"
- "Valley Candle"
- "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"
- "The Apostrophe to Vincentine"
- "Floral Decorations for Bananas"
- "Anecdote of Canna"
- "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds"
- "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb "
- "Of the Surface of Things"
- "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks"
- "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman"
- "The Place of the Solitaires"
- "The Weeping Burgher"
- "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician"
- "Banal Sojourn"
- "Depression Before Spring"
- "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
- "The Cuban Doctor"
- "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"
- "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
- "Sunday Morning"
- "The Virgin Carrying a Lantern"
- "Stars at Tallapoosa"
- "Explanation"
- "Six Significant Landscapes"
- "Bantam in Pine-Woods"
- "Anecdote of the Jar"
- "Palace of the Babies"
- "Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs"
- "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow"
- "Cortège for Rosenbloom"
- "Tattoo"
- "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws"
- "Life Is Motion"
- "The Wind Shifts"
- "Colloquy with a Polish Aunt"
- "Gubbinal"
- "Two Figures in Dense Violet Night"
- "Theory"
- "To the One of Fictive Music"
- "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion"
- "Peter Quince at the Clavier"
- "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
- "Nomad Exquisite"
- "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad"
- "The Death of a Soldier"
- "Negation"
- "The Surprises of the Superhuman"
- "Sea Surface Full of Clouds"
- "The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade"
- "Lunar Paraphrase"
- "Anatomy of Monotony"
- "The Public Square"
- "Indian River"
- "Tea"