Unpacking: A Postcard from a Volcano

Poetry is a most concise air - bones are a most concise poetry.

Wallace Stevens might hope we believe that embracing a poet's body of work from its spring to its winter is like separating the white [imagination] from the yolk [body] and whipping it full of air [life set aside in the space of nature] until it peaks as a stiff froth; a legacy smearing life's experience with the noble yolk [sun].

It is spring, the beginning of a shared experience such as mine, the reader of Wallace Stevens's poetry. I pick up the poems [bones] buried in books and manuscripts [archives like a coffin for the dead] and read aloud; expecting to hear, see, feel what Stevens' observed, his passions, and his life's experience. I am here as a child transformed by the poems written knowing that somehow I am here because they were written and archived. My pace is at first slow hoping to understand not realizing how quickly the words were spoken in their day in the way most meaningful. Words come off my tongue like the trusting wind [literate air] not realizing how much meaning is lost in the first reading. Stevens wants me to know that A Postcard from a Volcano [like receiving a note in a bottle at sea] is not about him, is about as he proclaims, "our" [dead poets], body [bodies] of work [oevres] and the gatekeepers. I read the poet's contemporaries' thoughts about the work and bring diverse perspectives to my understanding; never fully experiencing the same air, the poet's transformation because the poet's own words [fruits] become more direct and succinct, tempered in autumn. Singing praises to poets seems to lend itself to the empty walls, un-listening publics. Is it likely that Wallace Stevens is suggesting here that reality and imagination of life is found by the individual; singing, reading, experiencing poetry as body of experience beginning with spring.

A Postcard from the Volcano

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill.

And that in autumn, when the grapes

Made sharp air sharper by their smell

These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones

We left much more, left what still is

The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow

Above the shuttered mansion-house,

Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair

We know for long the mansions look

And what we said of it became

A part of what it is . . . Children,

Still weaving budded aureoles,

Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems

As if he that lived there left behind

A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Considerations and annotations: [initial reception: message by mail from Mt. Vesuvius - eruption - arts and antiquities buried for future generations to unbury.]

Children [the reader] picking up our bones [Afghani children picking up unexploded field arsonal] [bones are the point of view = poetry in its most concise air]

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill. [poetry of its time and the huge conversations philosophies]

And that in autumn [days are shorter and air crisper], when the grapes [fruits of a poets writing]

Made sharp air sharper by their smell [Grapes of Wrath - the movie of postwar depression]

These had a being, breathing frost; [crisp crackling voice with signs of winter]

And least will guess that with our bones [poetry and writings]

We left much more, left what still is

The look of things, [descriptions] left what we felt [passions]

At what we saw [looking]. The spring clouds blow [wind, air, activity, promise]

Above the shuttered mansion-house, [archives of the ancients - experience - body is one's temple - buried in a coffin]

Beyond our [poets'] gate [to heaven] and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair [loss of written words]

We know for long the mansions [body's] look

And what we said of it became [biography]

A part of what it is . . . Children [the readers],

Still weaving budded aureoles [praises and new meanings],

Will speak our speech and never know, [recite our poetry without passion]

Will say of the mansion that it seems [speaking of the dead]

As if he that lived there left behind [legacy]

A spirit storming in blank walls, [passion erupting in the void listen-less public]

A dirty house in a gutted world [cluttered thinking with no receptacle],

A tatter of shadows peaked to white, [whipped egg whites - draping of the poet's oevre whipped to a stiff froth]

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun. [blessed with a noble life]