On the Manner of Addressing Clouds
"Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published in 1921 according to Librivox[1] and is therefore in the public domain.[2]
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.
One reading is that the poem expresses Stevens's distrust of the reason of doleful philosophers[3] and "gloomy grammarians", which creates a layer of obfuscation or "clouds" that occludes the illumination of imagination, "the sun and moon". The clouds may be those of Aristophanes' play, The Clouds, which ridiculed Socrates and the intellectual fashions of the time. The speech of clouds would contrast with "the simplest of speech" that would be enough for those who know "the ultimate plato", as Stevens writes in Homunculus et la Belle Étoile. The poem is consistent with what Stevens called his "pagan" skepticism about religion in Sunday Morning (poem), and his distrust of rationalist philosophy ("rationalists, wearing square hats").
Notes
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- t
- e
- "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"