The giant, the bully, and the first idea

The giant is poetry, the giant is doctrine of the "first idea"?

The freed man, escaping the truth of the "first idea", is freed for the "first idea"?

If the first idea is the creation of man, might Wallace Stevens be thinking about the miracle of the imagination? Is imagination the bully, the giant worthy of escaping?

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (WS pg. 333) It Must Be Abstract Stanza VII

It feels good as it is without the giant,

A thinker of the first idea. Perhpas

The truth depends on a walk around a lake,

New to poetry and new to something explained by Dr. Sexon as tersets, I approach Stanza VII in Notes to a Supreme Fiction as composed in Tersets. I therefore will decompose each terset (set of three lines) to thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. And immediately a thesis emerges as a freed man feeling good in the first line of the first terset.

If the thinker of the first idea in the antithesis (second line) is the giant, then doctrine is an oppressor. However I think the thinker of the first idea is the latest freed man. If that is a correct assumption, then creating or allowing the imagination to plant a thought is what the thinker does without oppression and it makes the thinker feel good.

To synthesize the third line, if a thinker freed of the bully-doctrine seeks truth, a walk around a lake is in order.

A composing as the body tires, a stop

To see hepatica, a stop to watch

A definition growing certain and

Thesis: The thesis here is an opposite of composing, rather a decomposing with age like hearing Beethoven's symphony played backward from his grave (a childhood joke). The thesis suggests assembling of thoughts and ideas as one matures.

Antithesis: Don't think and arrest every idea. Merely look at the three lobed leaved white-lavender flowers of the North American hepatica.

Synthesis: Watch the growing definition. Thinking is preceded with looking. In a drawing class, our assignment was to place the pencil on the paper and draw on the paper without lifting the pencil, eyes intent on the subject. What happened within moments was a clearly evolving clarity for details undetected at the onset. In Wednesdays class we learned that the answer to "What do you think about the snow this morning?" is "Yes!." I could not help but notice that morning in the snow the silence of my lovely alfa dog Sara's footprints, the doctrine to my mornings as I rise at six and sit on the edge of my bed. I see her footprints in the snow and know if she has arisen from her bed and made that trip for water and food for the next act of leaving it for decomposition. Without snow, I am alerted by her noisy clatter of long fingernails hitting the deck like a drunken sailor. The snow silenced the sailor. The sailor, Sara, is beyond 14 years. 12 years is the life expectancy for her breed. She composes in maturity her dance with the cowbirds who share her food and water for the next act of decomposition as I decompose this composition.

A wait within that certainty, a rest

In the swags of pain-trees bordering the lake.

Perhaps there are times of inherent excellence,

Thesis: Clarity from looking needs maturity, as the body tires

Antithesis: The walk around the lake is a meander into tough times of past experience. However, this could mean the doctrine of the tree of life and something someone accused me of sitting in an airplane headed for D.C., "you too were born a sinner." I moved to another seat after silently agreeing that he probably was becoming a sinner in his attempt to stir my coffee.

Synthesis: Clarity is evasive and punctuated with moments of false hope. Jason's blog about others reading too much of their own thoughts into the readings of Stevens's poems is surfacing in my own interpretation of Stanza VII.

As when the cock crows on the left and all

Is well, incalculable balances

At which a kind of Swiss perfection comes

Thesis: Carlos Castenada and Don Juan de la Cruz suggest the crow, not the cock, coming from left behind means death.

Antithesis: Don't believe the cock crowing and all is well, a bird is a bird and the sun may rise without the crow[ing].

Synthesis: The ticking of the clock perfectly balances life and death, composing comes as the body tires. What will be will be. I read for forty days and nights the three books composing the teachings of Don Juan de la Cruz. I walked through the woods with my fingers in the exact position to draw in the energy. I was at the center of reality seeing the realness of the words on the page and how each stanza influenced my real life experiences. I even say myself jump off the cliff at the "cliff hanger" end of the second book. It was only in the final pages of the third book that Don Juan de la Cruz revealed the secret to clarity, something like this, "You would not have believed me if I had told you this truth before you lived it yourself."

And a familiar music of the machine

Sets up its Schwarmerei, not balances

That we achieve but balances that happen.

Thesis: Civilization is the hubbub of every day

Antithesis: Civilization sets up its Schwarmerei (don't know what that is so I will imagine it to be a bullying doctrine of how things should, ought, must be)

Synthesis: What will be will be is not the same as the scenario set up by civilized doctrine.

As a man and woman meet and love forthwith.

Perhaps there are moments of awakening,

Extreme fortuitous, personal, in which

Thesis: Balance defined as man + woman + momentous love; perhaps the man is the thinker (after all this is not yet the 50s) and the woman the muse with the imagination the love forthwith.

Antithesis: Clarity is a only a punctuation

Synthesis: Lucky encounter

We more than awaken, sit on the edge of sleep,

As on an elevation, and behold

The academies like structures in a mist.

Thesis: Somewhere we realize a balance between life and death

Antithesis: Sitting on our bullying perch of doctrine and set up

Synthesis: Schools of thinking instead of looking.

Tying this Stanza back to the poem of memorization, The Latest Freed Man, the subject of truth and doctrine and who is the delivering entity for what purpose comes to mind. It is an ox-like struggle to escape another's doctrine lorded from a high perch. The ox-like struggle and change to being freed comes from the strength that is the strength of the sun. My project places the sun as a candle in the center of Plato's Cave to explore comparative perspectives on how strength emerges from the sun. This morning I am reminded of Alfred E. Newman and the purpose of his 60 year MADness success: be[a]ware the content in everything you see, hear, and think; and question authority.

The giant is poetry, the giant is doctrine of the "first idea"?

The freed man, escaping the truth of the "first idea", is freed for the "first idea"?

If the first idea is the creation of man, might Wallace Stevens be thinking about the miracle of the imagination? Is imagination the bully, the giant worthy of escaping?