The Wallace Stevens Journal The Wallace The Wallace Stevens Journal Special Conference Issue, Part 1 Special Conference Vol. 28 No. 2Fall 2004 Vol. Special Conference Issue, Part 1 A Publication of The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2004 The Wallace Stevens Journal Volume 28 Number 2 Fall 2004 Contents Special Conference Issue, Part I Celebrating Wallace Stevens: The Poet of Poets in Connecticut Edited by Glen MacLeod and Charles Mahoney Introduction —Glen MacLeod and Charles Mahoney 125 POETS ON STEVENS: INQUIRY AND INFLUENCE A Postcard Concerning the Nature of the Imagination —Mark Doty 129 Furious Calm —Susan Howe 133 Line-Endings in Wallace Stevens —James Longenbach 138 On Wallace Stevens —J. D. McClatchy 141 A Lifetime of Permissions —Ellen Bryant Voigt 146 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON STEVENS Planets on Tables: Stevens, Still Life, and the World —Bonnie Costello 150 Wallace Stevens and the Curious Case of British Resistance —George Lensing 158 Cross-Dressing as Stevens Cross-Dressing —Lisa M. Steinman 166 STEVENSIAN LANGUAGE “A Book Too Mad to Read”: Verbal and Erotic Excess in Harmonium —Charles Berger 175 Place-Names in Wallace Stevens —Eleanor Cook 182 Verbs of Mere Being: A Defense of Stevens’ Style —Roger Gilbert 191 WALLACE STEVENS AND HISTORICISM: PRO AND CON Stevens’ Soldier Poems and Historical Possibility —Milton J. Bates 203 What’s Historical About Historicism? —Alan Filreis 210 Wallace Stevens and Figurative Language: Pro and Con —James Longenbach 219 THE COLLECTED POEMS: THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS Prologues to Stevens Criticism in Fifty Years —John N. Serio 226 The Collected Poems: The Next Fifty Years —Susan Howe 231 Wallace Stevens and Two Types of Vanity —Massimo Bacigalupo 235 Position Paper: Wallace Stevens —Christian Wiman 240 Stevens’ Collected Poems in 2054 —Marjorie Perloff 242 KEYNOTE ADDRESS Wallace Stevens: Memory, Dead and Alive —Helen Vendler 247 THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM Poets of Life and the Imagination: Wallace Stevens and Chick Austin —Eugene R. Gaddis 261 STEVENS AND LATER AMERICAN POETS “He mutter spiffy”: A [Lawyer’s] Response to Berryman’s Dream Song 219, “So Long? Stevens” —Kathryn Mudgett 279 Doty, Deleuze, and “Distance”: The Stevens Intertext —David R. Jarraway 285 Merrill and Stevens —Langdon Hammer 295 EARLY STEVENS Recontextualizing the Early Stevens: Stevens, Loy, and Winters —Andrew John Miller 303 Stevens’, Ahem, Folk Songs: “Sur Ma Guzzla Gracile” —Chris Beyers 313 Placing a Tree in “Anecdote of the Jar” —Masahiko Abe 322 Poems 329 Reviews 335 News and Comments 342 Cover Conference Poster Celebrating Wallace Stevens: The Poet of Poets in Connecticut Designed by Apirat Infahsaeng The Wallace Stevens Journal EDITOR John N. Serio POETRY EDITOR ART EDITOR BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Joseph Duemer Kathryn Jacobi George S. Lensing EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS EDITORIAL BOARD William T. Ford Milton J. Bates A. Walton Litz Maureen Kravec Jacqueline V. Brogan James Longenbach Hope Steele Robert Buttel Glen MacLeod Eleanor Cook Marjorie Perloff TECHNICAL ASSISTANT Alan Filreis Joan Richardson Sue Campbell B. J. Leggett Melita Schaum George S. Lensing Lisa M. Steinman The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. PRESIDENT ADVISORY BOARD John N. Serio Milton J. Bates Joseph Duemer Owen E. Brady Kathryn Jacobi Robert Buttel George S. Lensing David M. Craig A. Walton Litz The Wallace Stevens Journal is published biannually in the Spring and Fall by the Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. Administrative and editorial offices are located at Clarkson University, Box 5750, Potsdam, NY 13699. Phone: (315) 268-3987; Fax: (315) 268-3983; E-mail: [email protected]; Web site: www.wallacestevens.com. The subscription rate for individuals, both domestic and foreign, is $25 for one year or $45 for two years and includes membership in the Wallace Stevens Society. Rates for institutions are $34 per year domestic and $39 per year foreign. Back issues are available. Also available are volumes 1–25 on CD-ROM. Manuscripts, subscriptions, and advertising should be addressed to the editor. Manu- scripts should be submitted in duplicate and in Works Cited format. Word-processed manuscripts will not be returned. Authors of accepted manuscripts should furnish a nonreturnable disk copy as well as photocopies of all secondary quotations. The Wallace Stevens Journal is indexed or abstracted in Abstracts of English Studies, American Humanities Index, Current Contents, IBR (International Bibliography of Book Re- views), IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature), MHRA Annual Bibliogra- phy, MLA International Bibliography, and Year’s Work in English Studies. This journal is a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. © 2004 The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. ISSN 0148-7132 Just Released An Edition of Wallace Stevens’ Poetry For Young Readers This magnificently illustrated collection features twenty-five of Wallace Stevens’ best-known poems. John N. Serio’s introduction and headnotes ease young readers into the splendors of Stevens’ poetry, while Robert Gantt Steele’s beautiful full-color illustrations capture the spirit and imagination of Stevens’ verse. Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York ISBN 1-4027-0925-0 $14.95 Introduction GLEN MACLEOD AND CHARLES MAHONEY HIS TWO-PART SPECIAL issue presents the proceedings from a three-day conference organized by the Department of English at Tthe University of Connecticut on April 8–10, 2004, Celebrating Wal- lace Stevens: The Poet of Poets in Connecticut. Designed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Wallace Stevens’ Collected Poems, as well as the 125th anniversary of the poet’s birth, the conference brought Stevens scholars from around the world to Stevens’ home state in order to examine his poetry, his life, and his legacy. Nearly fifty speakers addressed such issues as Stevens and philosophy, the place of home in Stevens’ po- etry, Stevens’ continental inspirations, Stevensian cross-dressing, poetry and history, Stevens’ verbs, and Stevens’ late prosody. In addition to talks by a broad array of literary scholars, the conference included a session of contemporary American poets discussing the influence of Stevens on their work, a reading by Ellen Bryant Voigt, the keynote address by Helen Vendler, a walking tour of Stevens’ Hartford led by the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens, and a slide-lecture by Eugene Gaddis of the Wadsworth Atheneum. The conference began on Thursday, April 8, with the panel “Poets on Stevens: Inquiry and Influence,” moderated by Margaret Gibson and in- cluding Mark Doty, Susan Howe, James Longenbach, J. D. McClatchy, and this year’s Wallace Stevens Poet, Ellen Bryant Voigt. The year 2004 marked the 41st anniversary of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Program, at which Voigt presided that evening. The program for Friday, April 9, was organized around four plenary sessions: “New Perspectives on Stevens” (moderated by Donna Hollen- berg) featured talks by Bonnie Costello, George Lensing, and Lisa Steinman; “Stevensian Language” (moderated by Charles Mahoney) was comprised of Charles Berger, Eleanor Cook, and Roger Gilbert; “Stevens and Histori- cism” (moderated by Glen MacLeod) presented Milton Bates, Alan Filreis, and James Longenbach; and the round-table discussion, “The Collected Poems: The Next Fifty Years” (moderated by Willard Spiegelman, editor, Southwest Review) brought together John N. Serio (editor, The Wallace Stevens THE WALLACE STEVENS JOURNAL 28.2 (FALL 2004): 125–127. © 2004 THE WALLACE STEVENS SOCIETY, INC. 125 Journal), poet and critic Susan Howe, Massimo Bacigalupo (Italian trans- lator of Stevens), and Christian Wiman (editor, Poetry). Marjorie Perloff, who was unable to attend the conference, has kindly agreed to add her voice to the discussion here. Following the reception and conference banquet Friday evening, Helen Vendler delivered the keynote address, “Wallace Stevens: Memory, Dead and Alive.” Focusing on the relatively neglected poem “Arcades of Phila- delphia the Past,” and on the image of lilacs in this and other poems throughout Stevens’ oeuvre, Vendler constructs a career-long drama of memory and desire that gives shape to the complex and powerful emo- tions underlying Stevens’ poetic language. Saturday morning’s program included twenty-seven papers delivered over nine panels. (The majority of these papers will appear in the Spring 2005 issue, vol. 29 no. 1, of The Wallace Stevens Journal.) On Saturday after- noon, conference-goers reconvened in Hartford in front of Stevens’ house on Westerly Terrace for the “Wallace Stevens Walk.” Led by members of the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens, they retraced the two-mile route that Stevens walked every day to work, culminating in a visit to the office Stevens occupied as vice president of The Hartford. Finally, on Saturday evening, the conference concluded at the Wadsworth Atheneum with Eugene Gaddis’ slide-lecture, “Poets of Life and the Imagination: Wallace Stevens and Chick Austin.” Gaddis charts the overlap of two great modernists in Hartford, the award-winning poet and the avant-garde director of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Though seem- ingly worlds apart in temperament, both Stevens and Austin shared the same convictions regarding the humanizing and ennobling powers of art; as Gaddis argues, “in their compulsion for self-expression, their defiant originality, and their devotion to new explorations of beauty and the imagi- nation, [they were] very much alike.” His talk also explores the influence of the Atheneum’s holdings in modern art on Stevens’ poetry, and the importance of the Atheneum for Stevens’ daughter Holly. The events of Saturday afternoon and evening gave conference-goers an unusual opportunity to see Stevens as “the poet of poets in Connecti- cut.” Though readers of Stevens’ poetry are generally aware of his connec- tion to Hartford, it remains difficult—indeed, next to impossible—to place him there, even fifty years after his death. Readers of Mark Twain can visit the meticulously renovated Mark Twain House or the newly built Twain reception center on Farmington Avenue. Scholars of Harriet Beecher Stowe can tour her house as well as the Stowe-Day library next door.