Words and Rules by Steven Pinker

Source of book: I own this. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, is one of the top five most influential books I have read. I recommend it to everyone, particularly those who want to understand just how far the human race has come in reducing violence. (Although a recent resurgence in authoritarianism and xenophobia from toxic males like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Putin is not helping things.) That book really clarifies how violence can and is being reduced by specific ideas, many stemming from the Enlightenment. 

Words and Rules is a VERY different sort of book. For one thing, rather than being in the pop sociology sort of field, it is directly related to Pinker’s original job, as a research psychologist. For another thing, this book is seriously nerdy, detail oriented, and of a more specialized appeal. Which is to say that I found it fascinating, but not everyone will. 

Pinker sets out to make a case for a specific model for how our brains process language, based in significant part on how we use regular and irregular verbs (and to a lesser degree, regular and irregular nouns.) I’ll give a thoroughly oversimplified version of the theory, but Pinker literally spends over 300 pages (including extensive footnotes and sources) supporting his argument. Part of the supporting evidence is research that Pinker himself did with colleagues over the years, which means that he is able to describe in detail the way the experiments worked, and how they controlled for specific factors. 

Here is the very basic idea behind the theory. Humans use two basic tools for language. The first is a list of words - that is, sounds that correspond to ideas. However, we do not merely learn and memorize words. In fact, these “words” are better described as “roots,” or pieces of words that have the core meaning of words in our language. We then use the second tool to assemble them: rules. The rule processing occurs at multiple levels. For example, we use syntax and grammar to assemble our words into sentences with meaning. We obviously do not memorize every possible sentence and what it means, but use rules to put meanings together into coherent ideas. 

Pinker takes it further, however, and argues that we do not memorize all of our words, but assemble many of them according to rules. For example, we do not think of “slice” and “sliced” and “slicing” as separate words, but as the root “slice” joined to the standard “regular” suffixes to indicate verb tense. 

This works really well for “regular” verbs, but breaks down for “irregular” verbs. We do not say “runned,” for example. These exceptions actually are the way that Pinker and others have tested the theory. There is no way to describe all of the various tests - that’s what the book is about. 

Pinker starts with some history, to explain where irregulars came from in the first place - usually they are the “fossils of the long dead rules” of an ancestor language. Language is transmitted down the generations by what is essentially a game of “telephone.” Distortions accumulate, changes are made, and each generation “reanalyzes” the grammatical and syntactical meaning of what it hears. 

All languages change through the centuries. We do not speak like Shakespeare (1564-1616), who did not speak like Chaucer (1343-1400), who did not speak like the author of Beowulf (around 750-800). As the changes take place, people feel the ground eroding under their feet and in every era have predicted the imminent demise of the language. Yet the twelve hundred years of changes since Beowulf have not left us grunting like Tarzan, and that is because language change is a game of Broken Telephone.

A generation of speakers uses their lexicon and grammar to produce sentences. The younger generation listens to the sentences and tries to infer the lexicon and grammar, the remarkable feat we call language acquisition.

This gets into the weeds pretty fast - again, something I personally found fascinating. Your mileage may vary. For us grammar nerds, it is fun to find out how and why we pluralize compound words. Why, for example, is it we sometimes put the plural on the first word and other times on the last? (You’ll have to read the book to find out - it’s….complicated. And also a great occasion for a reference to “I am the very model of a modern major general.” 

I learned a new word from this book, by the way: “muzzy.” It means almost, but not quite, the same thing as “fuzzy,” the way we use it in a figurative sense. It can be defined as “blurred or indistinct” - similar to “fuzzy,” - or as “unable to think clearly; confused.” Pinker uses it in both senses, to describe words that we tend to categorize as on the line. Do we use a regular or irregular form? Neither feels quite right. And there are a number of words in this category - typically unusual and archaic sorts. For example, I might feel comfortable using “smite-smote-smitten” because I read old books. But even I find “thrive-throve-thriven” a bit...muzzy. I am more likely to use a regular “thrived” here. That’s a word, by the way, which is in the process of converting from irregular to regular. 

I have to give Pinker credit for his creative use of other materials to illustrate his points. Comic strips get significant play, particularly ones involving children and language. In addition to his Gilbert and Sullivan reference above, I also appreciated his brief quote from Leo Rosten’s delightful books about the fictional H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. (Those who have read the books will understand.) 

Perhaps even further into the ideas: Pinker discusses at length the two competing philosophical theories of the Mind, Rationalism and Empiricism. Again, a bit simplified, but in this context, rationalism claims the mind has inherent structures and works by rules, while empiricism claims the mind is a blank slate and works by associationism. One might say, “words versus rules.” Pinker describes a series of experiments by himself and by others (it’s a LOT of experimentation, believe me) using the past tense to essentially bring the two theories together in “single combat.” As one might expect from the earlier part of the book, both have elements of truth, but Rationalism wins overall. Humans have a striking ability to infer rules and use them to compensate for an inability to experience and remember every possible reality. 

Throughout the book, we move from the specific to the general. We start with how regular and irregular verb forms work and how they came to be, and end up with a broad theory as to the workings of the human brain regarding not just language, but many areas of knowledge. Pinker notes that it is often these curiosities about specific phenomena which lead to greater scientific knowledge. 

In science the pursuit of idle curiosity often pays off in deeper understanding. People’s inquisitiveness about flied out, talismans, sabertooths, still lifes, outputted, rat-infested, and other unexpected forms has enhanced our understanding of regularity and irregularity and provided an entirely new kind of evidence in favor of the words-and-rules theory.

While it would take far too long to detail all of the scope of this book, I do want to mention some of the ways in which Pinker explores the reaches of the theory. First, while, for obvious reasons, English is the language he uses most; he also gradually expands his view back along the language tree. Starting with related languages like German and Dutch, he ends up showing that, while languages differ greatly in words and syntax, they all have regular and irregular words (although not always verbs), and function using a words and rules system. In other words, it isn’t just how English works: this is how human brains work regarding language. We memorize words, but also process using rules, thus saving memory and vastly simplifying the language assembly process. 

Pinker also looks at children, and how they learn language. After all, we adult grammar snobs can discuss tenses and regularity in an academic sense, but ALL of us learned most of this intuitively before we even started school. It is actually amazing what kids learn and how fast and early they learn it. A five year old may not know all the nuances or be able to articulate the rules, but listen to one sometime: it is astonishing how fluently they navigate tenses as well as the distinction between regular and irregular even at that age. 

Finally, Pinker examines some fascinating case studies of people who have either suffered brain damage or who have developmental issues that affect one, but not both, of the systems. For example, patients who have suffered strokes and have one form or another of aphasia. Some lose the ability to remember words, but can assemble grammatical sentences. Others remember words, but cannot process the syntax correctly. As Pinker’s theory would predict, loss of the “rules” means a person struggles to correctly use regular verb tenses, while loss of “words” means they tend to use regular verb tenses on irregular verbs. Ditto for certain developmental issues which do not affect general intelligence. This chapter was quite fascinating. 

This book isn’t for everyone, but for those who love language, find science fascinating, and wish to learn more about the human psyche, it is worth a try. I read it a bit at a time, because it can overwhelm with detail. It is, however, thoroughly footnoted, with sources thoroughly cited. Pinker has a solid reputation in his field, and has published a couple of far more technical books on the same topic as Words and Rules, which is aimed at the layperson. While, for obvious reasons, there is no such thing as a One True Theory™ which explains everything, Pinker makes a good case for his view of things - and it does do a pretty good job of explaining what we observe. 

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I have loved Yiyun Li ever since I first read Gold Boy, Emerald Girl back in 2013. I followed that up with the eviseceratingly tragic yet beautiful The Vagrants about a year ago. It is hard to believe that English isn’t her first language - she shares Conrad’s ability to make amazing art in a language she didn’t grow up speaking. As this book reveals, she intentionally chose to write only in English, and never in her native Chinese. 

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life was published in 2017, five years after Yiyun had a serious mental breakdown, attempted suicide twice, and landed in the hospital for her own protection. The book itself is a series of essays wherein she explores her own psyche, her breakdown, her past, and her relationship to literature and writing. At least, that is the best I can do to explain the book, because it isn’t really like anything I have read before. And it is really, really good. Her writing is so luminous, and simultaneously oblique and devastatingly revealing, it draws you in. 

Yiyun has said in the past that she is “not an autobiographical writer.” That is, her stories are not about her or people she knew. But, as she admits in this book, that was a lie. I don’t think it was a lie in the sense of being actually untrue. She doesn’t write stories with her as a character. But if I am reading her essay on this issue correctly, her story is told through the psyches of her characters, not their situations, plots, or choices. And that feels right, after reading this book. She is a very private person, and her characters tend to keep their emotions mostly out of sight. But, just as her stories reveal the emotions of her characters in such flayed reality that you want to look away, her essays in this book are as introspective and self-revealing as anything I have ever read. I mean, you can see the viscera and throbbing arteries of her emotional experiences. It is hard to take at times, which is why I read the book slowly. The reality is just too real to be looked in the face. 

In an interesting coincidence, this is the second book I have read in as many months that had autobiographical explorations of depression and suicide. The other was a fictional work, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater. While the two are very different - psychologically different too - the share that uncomfortable look into mental illness. As an example, Emezi’s character has multiple personalities, tends to be loud and act out, and seems like a being on fire more often than not. It is a violent vision of suicide, of self destruction, and inner torment. Yiyun’s on the other hand, is that of a person who is quiet, pleasant, polite, thoughtful, ridiculously erudite - but who is dying internally, filled with a rather quiet self-loathing and distaste for living. It’s really spooky the way she writes it. 

As I noted in the former review, I am not particularly prone to either depression or suicidal thoughts. I’ve been in a few dark places, but they tend to be connected to circumstances, not major depression. And also, I joke that I am more homicidal than suicidal. (Don’t worry, I’m not homicidal. I’m not a violent person, but more of a fuzzball with a smart mouth. I just tend to get angry rather than depressed.) So these books were really more about seeing into the mind of someone else, and recognizing some of the darkness, if not its manifestations. It is an indication of how good the writing is that these books felt so real and familiar - and how deeply they messed with my emotions while reading. 

Yiyun takes an interesting approach to things in the book. For the most part, she doesn’t talk directly about what happened or what she did. Rather, she talks about other writers. Some of these are ones I might have guessed: Turgenev, Chekhov, Marianne Moore, Stefan Zweig. But some were a bit surprising, such as Thomas Hardy. Wait, what?? And some others which I haven’t read, and were not that familiar with, such as Elizabeth Bowen, John McGahern, and William Trevor. (The last of which she formed a friendship with, and who gets most of a chapter to himself.) Yiyun traces her love affair with literature from her childhood through the present, and you can see exactly how she ended up going from a promising career in science to taking the leap into writing. 

Rather than try further to explain the book, let me mention a few quotes that I wrote down as particularly insightful. 

After years of living in America, I still feel a momentary elation whenever I see advertisements for weight-loss programs, teeth-whitening strips, hair-loss treatments, or plastic surgery with the contrasting effects shown under before and after. The certainty in that pronouncement--for each unfortunate or inconvenient situation, there is a solution to make it no longer be--both attracts and perplexes me. Life can be reset, it seems to say; time can be separated. But that logic appears to me as unlikely as traveling to another place to become a different person. Altered sceneries are at best distractions, or else new settings for old habits. What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self. Even the most inconsistent person is consistently himself. 

Cue a bit of Clint Black? What makes this a particularly great insight is her understanding of the American mythos, and the way we built an economy on the lie that we can become fundamentally different people if we consume the right way.  

There is another moment when Yiyun recalls a visit to Ireland during a heat wave, and notes that, like music, weather can be a crucial part of a memory - and trigger it. 

Children, unlike their elders, do not converse about the weather. It is a fact to them, connected to the present only. Is it because weather can represent too much that it is often reduced to small talk? Weather gives experiences a place in time: a mood in which to inset a memory, a variable or a constant when comparing now and then. 

It’s bits like that which separate competent writers from the best, and I can only dream of being able to write - and observe - like that. Or how about this recalling of what reading meant to her during her deeply unpleasant time in the Chinese Army? 

I did not see myself in Scarlett O’Hara; or Anna Karenina, or Tess Durbeyfield or Jane Erye; nor did I look for myself in Jean-Christophe or Nick Adams or Paul Morel or the old man fighting the sea. To read oneself into another person’s tale is the opposite of how and why I read. To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence. 

That last sentence is amazing. And I think that, while I am not so inwardly turned as Yiyun, I get that feeling. Perhaps it is how introverts tend to read? 

Running through the book is Yiyun’s own history, which certainly contributed to her breakdown. Her mother was, to put it mildly, abusive. And probably mentally ill. Yiyun was the favorite child, so her sister probably had it worse, but the things Yiyun tells of her childhood make it clear that her mother abused everyone in the family, including her father. Some of the things said and done are just horrifying, such as her mother telling her that she “deserved the ugliest death” because she didn’t love her mother enough, and on the day she got married, telling her that she had left her with only the hope for Li’s divorce. I mean, it’s bad, and yet Yiyun remains haunted and drawn to her mother. In this context, and the fact that her parents’ memories - even though she doesn’t share them - still affect her in unexpected ways, she quotes Ralph Ellison: “Things were not supposed to be this way.” 

One of the chapters is largely about Turgenev, who had a similarly abusive and possessive mother. How about this fact? After disowning Turgenev’s brother for marrying, and then acting indifferent when the children of that marriage died in the same year, she told Turgenev, “I alone conceived you. You are an egoist of egoist. I know your character better than you know yourself...I prophesy that you will not be loved by your wife.” 

Ouch. But Yiyun’s mother said something similar to her: “I don’t even need to lay my eyes on you to know everything about you because you came from my body.” Apparently, she said this to the young Li regularly. She then asks, “How do we live with what we have, unhaunted?” And the answer is clearly that we cannot. We remain haunted. 

I must admit, a good bit of this resonated with me. My mother was not even in the same class as these controlling and abusive mothers, but she was damaged by her own childhood, and never really was able to transition from the mother of children to the mother of adults in a healthy manner. I did hear all too often during my teens that she feared I would marry a sweet girl and run roughshod over her. In the actual event, I married a strong, confident, and assertive woman, and I am pretty sure my mom was disappointed, which is why she eventually antagonized my wife until she was unwilling to waste time on my parents at all. So yes, I am very much haunted, and have to live with what I have. Things were not supposed to be this way. 

Returning again near the end of the book to her mother, Yiyun gives yet another facet of the issue. 

Writing is the only part of my life I have taken beyond my mother’s storytelling. I have avoided writing in an autobiographical voice because I cannot bear that it could be overwritten by my mother’s omniscience. I can easily see all other parts of my life in her narrative: my marriage, my children, my past. Just as she demands to come into my narrative, I demand to be left out of hers. There is no way to change that; not a happy ending, not even an ending is possible.

Perhaps the most difficult and haunting part of the book is Yiyun’s description of her never-ending quest to be invisible, to not matter, to prove that nothing matters. And it is clear that she wants to be visible, to be loved, to matter, and to prove that everything matters. There is a line in which she perhaps allows herself a glimpse of why. 

Nothing matters. The belief was fallible, but I knew from experience that absence is more reliable than presence, and a lie sustains life with absoluteness that truth fails to offer. 

There are layers to unpack in that one. Most obvious is that Yiyun finds that reality leads her toward suicide, and that some form of self-delusion appears necessary to prevent that. This is some crazy philosophical stuff, to be sure, and it isn’t just her. (As the book makes clear.) But I think too that she hits on a truth about...truth. Truth is complicated and messy and human and ambiguous. A lie is absolute. Lies tell you that everything can be summed up in one rule, one statement, one “truth.” And this is why cults thrive and hate multiplies and people embrace obvious untruths. It is far easier - and simpler because it is absolute - to say “my problems are the fault of those people,” than to look at the complexities of life. Far easier to exterminate the Jews, or deport immigrants, than to address the layers of kludge and rules and laws and systems which have choked the average person. Finding true solutions is always hard work - it is the work of reformation, not revolution - while “solutions” are easy to find. They have an absoluteness that truth cannot offer. On a related note, this observation is interesting, particularly in the context of whether wishing to escape suffering is selfish or not. (Many consider suicide selfish, but are other methods of escape likewise selfish?) 

It is easier to take something away than to give. Giving requires understanding and imagination; taking away requires only resolution and action.

This too ties back: giving - like truth - is complicated, and requires understanding the one to whom one gives, and imagination in finding a mutual good. That’s the complexity of truth. And the lie is easier - just take things away from other people. Send them back. Lock them up. Tell them to shut up. 

In the same chapter is an unexpected insight, which caught me off guard. I mentioned that I was not expecting Thomas Hardy to make an appearance. I was doubly not expecting to find a quote from Phillip Larkin about Jude the Obscure and the ensuing discussion to change my perspective on that book. Yiyun points out something that bothered me about the book: 

Sue is so incoherent that she raises in my mind the question of believability. Not that I don’t believe her as a character--a complaint one sometimes hears as a criticism of a less successful character--but I don’t believe a character can achieve inexplicability as she has. “Really too irritating not to have been a real person” was Larkin’s conclusion, and some biographers have suggested Hardy’s first wife as a model. 

This is true. Characters in stories are not allowed the luxury of being inexplicable. They have to do things for reasons, and Sue seems to have no reasons behind her behavior. She makes no sense. But this is, perhaps, the way a lot of people in real life are, if you think about it. Not everyone, clearly, but enough. The whole passage on Jude and Sue in particular, is really insightful. Even though I still dislike what Hardy did with her, I can understand it better. 

The chapter on language was also fascinating. Yiyun essentially “abandoned” (her words) three key things: her mother, her motherland, and her mother tongue. She compares herself to Nabokov, who likewise had to write in a non-native language. He did it for different reasons, though, and with reluctance. Yiyun did it intentionally, for rather complex reasons (although the fact that her mother cannot read English is one of them.) I can’t even begin to duplicate the extended exploration of this, but I think this line is a good start:

I feel a tinge of guild when I imagine Nabokov’s woe. Like all intimacies, the intimacy between one and one’s mother tongue can demand more than one is willing to give, or what one is capable of giving. If I allow myself to be honest, I would borrow from Nabokov for a stronger and stranger statement. My private salvation, which cannot and should not be anybody’s concern, is that I disowned my native language.

There are eight chapters, but also an “afterword” which seems in many ways to be its own chapter. I guess that is a matter of perspective. In any case, it has an amazing paragraph that I think makes a good way to finish this post. 

One cannot be an adept writer of one’s life; nor can one be a discerning reader of that tale. Not equipped with a novelist’s tools to create plots or maneuver pacing, to speak omnisciently or abandon an inconvenient point of view, to adjust time’s linearity and splice the less connected moments, the most interesting people among us, I often suspect, are flatter than the flattest character in a novel. Not only do we not have any alternatives, we discredit them. It has to be so--this indisputable conviction is often at the foundation of our decisions, including the most impulsive or the most catastrophic. It is easier to be certain of one thing than to be uncertain of a hundred; easier for there to be one is than many might have beens.

Yiyun Li has written one short story collection and two novels that I have yet to read. I was reminded again with this book why I love her writing so much. I definitely have her other works on my list, and I truly hope that she stays with us for a long time. 

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This interview in The Guardian in relation to this book is pretty fascinating. 

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A tragic footnote: soon after this book was published, Yiyun's teenaged son committed suicide. The amount of pain in this family of generations is lacerating. I wish I had a cure to offer, but life and humans are too complicated for simple answers.

Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

Source of book: I own the complete Wallace Stevens in a Library of America edition - a gift from my in-laws.

I first discovered Wallace Stevens nine years ago when I read a delightful book on mathematics (specifically, the history of zero as a placeholder), The Nothing That Is by Robert Kaplan. The title for that book - which I highly recommend - is drawn from a Wallace Stevens poem, “The Snow Man.” Which I then read, and loved. More recently, at a faculty concert for our local state university, I got to hear a modern work, a song setting of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and was again entranced. Needless to say, when I received this book for Christmas last year, I knew I had to dive in and read some.

I think that musicians are particularly likely to enjoy Stevens’ poems, because his use of the language is highly musical. (You DO read poetry out loud, right? It isn’t the same otherwise…) Stevens wasn’t a musician by trade, however. He was, of all things, an insurance executive. Furthermore, he didn’t write his first published poem until age 35, and didn’t publish a collection until his mid 40s. He was a late bloomer to be sure. He did, however, write regularly thereafter, making him unusual as poets go in that many of his major works were written when most people have retired.

As I have tended to do for my poetry project of the last 10 years, I started with the first collection by the author. In this case, that would be Harmonium - I also included the poems added to the revised edition of that collection. In this case, I think I made a wise choice, because the two poems I mentioned above are in this collection, and I got to re-read them in context.

Stevens is a bit of a modernist; definitely a contrast to his contemporary Robert Frost in form, despite occasional overlap in themes and topics. For the most part, his poems do not utilize rhyme in the traditional sense, but they often have a recognizable meter. He also uses consonance and alliteration extensively, and both internal and end rhyme - the latter in unexpected ways, such as when a particular ending sound is used at irregular, but thematically significant intervals. If you just scan his poems, you might miss a lot of this, unless you are really searching for it. But read them out loud, and they will jump out of their hiding places on the page into life in a delightful and striking way.

For the most part, I loved this collection. I should mention one sour note, though. Harmonium was first published in 1923, and it reflects some of the attitudes of its time, unfortunately, in a few poems. Specifically, Stevens indulges in some racial stereotyping that is wince worthy in the 21st Century. It reminds me of reading Rudyard Kipling, or some of Mark Twain’s books. In Stevens’ case, it doesn’t seem malicious - he isn’t trying to denigrate anyone. He just...stereotypes. In a few poems, I just read it and moved on, disappointed.

This flaw aside, however, I found Stevens to be fascinating. In addition to the wonderfully creative use of language and rhythm, he has a knack for creative metaphors, deeply philosophical thinking, and unexpected twists on everyday reality. He is a good example of the way that poets do what prosaic philosophers cannot: express the inexpressible, fathom the imponderable, and speak truths which cannot be reduced to plain words. It is a way of expressing meaning and life shared with music: it is truth felt rather than intellectualized.

I selected ten poems from Harmonium that I really liked. As usual for me, I gravitated toward poems with nature or humanity in them.

Let’s start with this one. It is the second in the collection, and grabbed my attention sharply, both for its provocative title and its negative approach. Rather than eulogize nature to make a philosophical point, it disses the lovely and graceful swan - but in the end, undermines his own premise. It’s almost a negative hyperbole, a psychological mind trick. And it is poetry.

“Invective Against Swans”

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks

And far beyond the discords of the wind.

A bronze rain from the sun descending marks

The death of summer, which that time endures

Like one who scrawls a listless testament

Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,

Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon

And giving your bland motions to the air.

Behold, already on the long parades

The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.

And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies

Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.

Every time I re-read it, it thrills me.

This next one is a master class in poetic use of sounds and words. You MUST read it aloud to get the effect. Whether you choose to read it as an ironic satire of romanticism in art - particularly early cinema - or as a less cynical tribute to the role of art in refreshing the human soul will depend on your mood.

“The Ordinary Women”

Then from their poverty they rose,

 From dry catarrhs, and to guitars

 They flitted

 Through the palace walls.

 They flung monotony behind,

 Turned from their want, and, nonchalant,

 They crowded

 The nocturnal halls.

 The lacquered loges huddled there

 Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay.

 The moonlight fubbed the girandoles.

 And the cold dresses that they wore,

 In the vapid haze of the window-bays,

 Were tranquil

 As they leaned and looked

 From the window-sills at the alphabets,

 At beta b and gamma g,

 To study

 The canting curlicues

 Of heaven and of the heavenly script.

 And there they read of marriage-bed.

 Ti-lill-o!

 And they read right long.

 The gaunt guitarists on the strings

 Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.

 The moonlight

 Rose on the beachy floors.

 How explicit the coiffures became,

 The diamond point, the sapphire point,

 The sequins

 Of the civil fans!

 Insinuations of desire,

 Puissant speech, alike in each,

 Cried quittance

 To the wickless halls.

 Then from their poverty they rose,

 From dry guitars, and to catarrhs

 They flitted

 Through the palace walls.

The juxtaposition of “guitars” and “catarrhs” - and the way they are reversed at the end, is just one of the great wordplays in this poem. There is near continual internal rhyme, repetition, and a wash of sounds that I just love.

Also amazing for its use of words is the long narrative poem, “The Comedian as the Letter C.” Generally believed to be a kind of fable of Stevens’ own career and attempts at self-discovery and reinvention, it is certainly a humorous look at the idea of traveling to find one’s self. It is far too long to quote here, but worth reading in its entirety. I want to quote the first bit, though, just for the fantastic writing.

Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,

The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates

Of snails, musician of pears, principium

And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig

Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,

Preceptor to the sea? Crispin at sea

Created, in his day, a touch of doubt.

An eye most apt in gelatines and jupes,

Berries of villages, a barber's eye,

An eye of land, of simple salad-beds,

Of honest quilts, the eye of Crispin, hung

On porpoises, instead of apricots,

And on silentious porpoises, whose snouts

Dibbled in waves that were mustachios,

Inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world.

Only a genius could come up with “Socrates of Snails.” I love that phrase.

This next one is definitely a favorite. It needs no comment, really.

“The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician”

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains

 Is full of long motions, as the ponderous

 Deflations of distance; or as clouds

 Inseparable from their afternoons;

 Or the changing of light, the dropping

 Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude

 Of night, in which all motion

 Is beyond us, as the firmament,

 Up-rising and down-falling, bares

 The last largeness, bold to see.

I love poems that paint a vivid, yet amorphous, picture like that. Here is another. Each of the six sections could stand alone as a poem. I couldn’t decide which parts to quote, so I quote the whole. The last is particularly delightful.

“Six Significant Landscapes”

I

 An old man sits

 In the shadow of a pine tree

 In China.

 He sees larkspur,

 Blue and white,

 At the edge of the shadow,

 Move in the wind.

 His beard moves in the wind.

 The pine tree moves in the wind.

 Thus water flows

 Over weeds.

         II

 The night is of the colour

 Of a woman's arm:

 Night, the female,

 Obscure,

 Fragrant and supple,

 Conceals herself.

 A pool shines,

 Like a bracelet

 Shaken in a dance.

         III

 I measure myself

 Against a tall tree.

 I find that I am much taller,

 For I reach right up to the sun,

 With my eye;

 And I reach to the shore of the sea

 With my ear.

 Nevertheless, I dislike

 The way ants crawl

 In and out of my shadow.

         IV

 When my dream was near the moon,

 The white folds of its gown

 Filled with yellow light.

 The soles of its feet

 Grew red.

 Its hair filled

 With certain blue crystallizations

 From stars,

 Not far off.

         V

 Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,

 Nor the chisels of the long streets,

 Nor the mallets of the domes

 And high towers,

 Can carve

 What one star can carve,

 Shining through the grape-leaves.

         VI

 Rationalists, wearing square hats,

 Think, in square rooms,

 Looking at the floor,

 Looking at the ceiling.

 They confine themselves

 To right-angled triangles.

 If they tried rhomboids,

 Cones, waving lines, ellipses --

 As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --

 Rationalists would wear sombreros.

Here is another one that I love.

“Tattoo”

The light is like a spider.

 It crawls over the water.

 It crawls over the edges of the snow.

 It crawls under your eyelids

 And spreads its webs there—

 Its two webs.

 The webs of your eyes

 Are fastened

 To the flesh and bones of you

 As to rafters of grass.

 There are filaments of your eyes

 On the surface of the water

 And in the edges of the snow.

This is one of several poems which explicitly draws an unexpected connection between nature and humanity - human nature as a metaphor for nature, rather than the other way around. Here is another, which I find striking.

“The Wind Shifts”

This is how the wind shifts:

 Like the thoughts of an old human,

 Who still thinks eagerly

 And despairingly.

 The wind shifts like this:

 Like a human without illusions,

 Who still feels irrational things within her.

 The wind shifts like this:

 Like humans approaching proudly,

 Like humans approaching angrily.

 This is how the wind shifts:

 Like a human, heavy and heavy,

 Who does not care.

The next poem is way too long too quote, but I will link it here. It is remarkable to me because it has an element of legalese in it. Each section shares form and words - but Stevens has “filled in the blanks” so to speak, with different pictures. The poem appears to have been inspired by a cruise Stevens and his wife took along the coast of Mexico. Both of them wrote diaries of the voyage, and Stevens borrowed some phrases from her impressions. Some critics have seen the poem as an extended metaphor for Stevens’ sexual relationship with his wife, which I find a bit of a stretch. (There was a time not that long ago when literature - and particularly poetry - was given the Freudian treatment. While there is plenty of eroticism in poetry, it got a bit out of hand, in my opinion.) Perhaps this poem has a hidden double meaning. Or maybe many meanings. In any event, it is one worth reading for its ever-shifting view of the effect of clouds reflected on the ocean.

I already mentioned the last two poems as ones I enjoyed before reading Harmonium. I love them enough to quote them again.

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

There is a lot of the haiku in there - in influence, not in specific form. Speaking of blackbirds (or, perhaps, black birds, I can think of eleven that I have seen locally), from the giant California Condor down to the European Starling. Each is a perspective in itself.

I’ll end with the one that started it all. This image has stuck with me for the last decade, and I keep finding myself returning to read the poem over and over. Do we really know anything? Can we perceive reality apart from ourselves and our perspectives? There are layers to this poem that reveal themselves only on repeated reading. I hope it resonates with you too.

“The Snow Man”

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.