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Australian Lampshades in Stained Glass
Diane Coady
Manufacturer: Kangaroo Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0864177046 |
Book Description
A comprehensive how-to/where-to guide to photographing more than 100 sites along the coast of Maine.
From dramatic rocky beaches and austere lighthouses to quiet harbors filled with lobster boats, tourists flock from around the world to photograph Maine's coastline. This book, written by two veteran photographers, tells you exactly where to go and how to go about shooting these "picture-perfect" places.
Directions to each site (including detailed maps), seasonal timing, places to eat and stay, and photographic tips accompany each site location, in addition to appendices featuring the authors' favorite places to photograph and tips on digital photography. Whether you want to capture close-up images of seaside flora and fauna or an old lobster boat to create your own postcard, this book will take you where you need to go. 60 full-color Photos, 15 maps, appendices.
Customer Reviews:
We'll See..........2006-03-16
My wife and I are planning our vacation to Maine for late Summer '06. We enjoyed the book, pictures, and suggestions for "great pictures."
We'll see how it goes!
This book was the BEST!.......2005-09-27
We followed his book to the letter and a great book with valuable infomation. Would recommend this book for anyone traveling to Maine and who likes Lighthouses. Wonderful and helpful tips.
Good guidebook.......2005-09-07
This is a good guidebook. It has enough detail/description to allow one to rationally select "likely sites" without being overpowering. However, there are an number of annoying editing errors present. (For example, every time the text reads "this place is 0.05 mile beyond that place", what's really meant is "0.5 mile". This is wrong in every place it's mentioned!)
You'll come home with prize winning photos!.......2004-05-30
David Middleton and Bruce Morrison have created a very insightful guide to coastal Maine photographic "hot spots". I am a professional photographer based in Maine, and while I am quite familiar with most of the places mentioned in this book I was pleasantly surprised to find out about others I had overlooked or was not aware of. (I also have a few secret spots of my own that did not crop up in the book..thankfully... but that's what makes this fun - a guidebook is best put to use as a springboard for further exploration.)
Photographers who live in Maine or are planning to visit coastal Maine will find much to enjoy here. You couldn't ask for a better resource. Even non-photographer types would do well to mine the gems of this book for general sightseeing and hiking tips.
Middleton and Morrison put you smack dab in the middle of great photo opportunities. A bit of a warning here: after you get a copy of this book you will feel a sudden and intense urge to be out on the Maine coast with your camera.
PS - Middleton's guide to Vermont photo sites is excellent as well.
Book Description
Nantucket is a favorite vacation destination for Americans. This new book captures all of the beauty of the island with over 500 rich color plates. It is Robert Gambee's fourth photography book on Nantucket—filled with images of boats, beaches, downtown scenes, private homes, moors, and more. Most of the images were taken with medium-format cameras and are striking in color, clarity, and composition. In addition to the stunning photography, this book contains a trove of information about Nantucket, past and present, along with detailed captions and a comprehensive index. This is the gift book of the year for anyone who has been to Nantucket or plans to go. Over 500 color photographs.
Book Description
A comprehensive how-to/where-to guide to photographing more than 100 sites.
From barns and quaint villages to vibrantly colored forests and peaks covered with pristine snow, tourists flock from around the world to photograph Vermont's beauty. Now, a nationally recognized outdoor photographer tells you exactly where to go and how to go about shooting those "picture perfect" moments.
Directions, seasonal timing, as well as specific photographic tips accompany each site location. Whether you want to capture close-up images of native wildflowers or shoot that famous old gen-ral store, Middleton will take you where you need to go. Additional tips on digital photography make this a book for every tourist's camera bag. 50 color photographs, 5 maps.
Customer Reviews:
Handy Companion.......2006-12-17
The book served as a useful companion on my trip to Vermont in October 2006.
It helped me do the groundwork which turned out be a great time saver .
It seems that the book needs editing as some of the landmarks appear to have changed.I would like more details to help locate Farms around Woodstock which is one of the prime reasons photographers travel to Vermont.
Another thing which adds to the difficulty is that you are mostly driving on back roads which are not be very clearly marked .
The complete reference to photographing Vermont.......2005-01-17
Say you decide to do photography in Vermont and you dont know where to start. Dont look furthur. This books will save you tons of time. I used this book to chart my 6 day trip. It worked out great and I am so happy that such a book exists. The book can help you to plan your entire trip. The only think I found was it dint have a lot of hidden road information. If the author can add that it would be great. I had to pick that up from the Vermon Fall Forums on the internet. I got the other book describing Maine and now I am planning to get the oregon one. I hope the author will have one out for Alaska and other states.
This is a great book.......2004-01-02
If you enjoy photography, especially in Vermont, then this is the book for you. I have enjoyed Mr. Middleton's photographs in Vermont Life and found the photos in this book to be even more fantastic. Vermont is a beautiful place and this book will tell you the best spots and the perfect times in which to photograph there. If you need further inspiration take a look at the authors Nature of Vermont, which is an exceptional book as well.
Book Description
Award-winning photographer Nancy Ellison offers an intimate glimpse of America's most fabled vacation island-Martha's Vineyard. Her romantic photographs capture landmarks such as the beautifully colored Gay Head Cliffs, the bustling farmers' market, weathered clapboard houses, haunting sunsets, and picturesque lighthouses. Ellison also explores unexpected views of the changing landscape that have often been overlooked.
Accompanying the photographs is text by Cape Cod resident and renowned travel writer Paul Theroux. His evocative essay reflects on the changing moods of the Vineyard. Diverse Island personalities including year round residents such as the shipbuilders and lobster men as well as celebrities Art Buchwald, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Walter Cronkite, Carly Simon, Bill Styron, Mike Wallace, and others come together in Vineyard Days, Vineyard Nights. There has not been a Vineyard book in many years. And now, Ellison's collection of photographs fills that gap and makes the perfect souvenir of the Island. The book is not only a wonderful treasure for visitors but is an intimate portrait of the Vineyard that residents will recognize and embrace as their own.
Customer Reviews:
GREAT GIFT!.......2007-01-04
GAVE THIS AS A GIFT TO A FRIEND WHO LIVES ON M. VINEYARD. SHE LOVES IT AND DISPLAYS IT AND WE ALWAYS LOOK AT IT. GREAT THOUGHT! JOYCE
WELL DONE!!.......2005-07-07
I am a resident of Martha's Vineyard and I find Nancy Ellison's book the best photography book ever done on the island. She treats her subject matter, be it people or landscape, with great integrity and respect. Her composition shows a wonderful artistic talent and her use of matted paper gives the reader a sense of paintings not photographs. It is a book no lover of the Vineyard can be without.
REALLY BAD.......2005-06-14
I live on Martha's Vineyard and I have seen many books of photographs of the island. This book is just not very good. The matte pages are an unnecessary affectation and they tend to make the photos look like old postcards. The author drops names of boats and celebrities, but some of the pictures are blurred or show their subjects from the back. Surely these folks didn't pose for these obviously quick fan snaps. Not the quality one would hope for from a professional photographer. Oh, by the way, the romance of this book also escapes me. Please think twice before spending so much money on such a slapdash enterprise.
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Photographer's Guide to New England (A Yankee Books Travel Guide)
Gordon A. Reims
Manufacturer: Yankee Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0899093280 |
Book Description
Authoritative yet easy-to-follow advice for taking memorable photos of favorite spots on the Cape and the Islands.
From the Bourne Bridge to Provincetown and all points in between, this guide to Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket points readers to the best locations for photographing the nature, people, and places of this historic coastal region. Includes a list of the author's favorite picture-taking spots. 3 maps, full-color throughout.
Customer Reviews:
A must-have book for every Cape Cod photographer.......2007-08-04
I'm a fine art photographer who has lived on Cape Cod for just over two years. I found this book extremely helpful. With less time spent on scouting around for the best vantage points, I have more time to actually get great shots during the sweet lighting times just before and after sunrises and sunsets. I bought this book for suggestions on places further away from my home town, but I'm also discovering new, tucked away spots within a 15-20 minute drive. I enjoyed Chris Linder's photos, too, and his anecdotes on other not-to-miss places -- I couldn't agree more about taking a few minutes for a stop at Coffee Obsession while in Woods Hole! I'd recommend this book to photographers of any skill level who have limited time to fine and capture great images.
Pretty nice, but lacking a bit.......2007-07-20
It's a nice book, and the pictures are very good, as well as the suggestions of where to take good photographs, and some good tips to get those good photographs. But ultimately, I would have hoped for more photographer tips, and perhaps even a caption on each photo saying what the exposure was, what lens he used, etc., to help an amateur see better how to take good photographs on the Cape. It is a guide to the Cape suggesting where to take good pictures ... I just wish it had way more HOW to take good pictures.
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Get Back to Nature, Snoopy!
Charles M. Schulz
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 0449219240
Release Date: 1990-08-28 |
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Get Back to Nature, Snoopy
Manufacturer: Crest
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000HI2K08 |
Book Description
A collection that all the major long poems and sequences, and every shorter poem of lasting value in Stevens' career. Edited by Holly Stevens, it includes some poems not printed in his earlier
Collected Works.
Customer Reviews:
Referenced by Harold Bloom.......2007-03-21
The Palm at the End of the Mind is the book referenced by Harold Bloom in his great study: Wallace Stevens, The Poems of Our Climate. Bloom's book attempts a full commentary upon nearly all of Stevens' poetic canon, and might prove to be helpful to understanding this difficult poetry. Palm does contain works not found in his Collected Poems, and it seems to be much cheaper in used condition than when I bought it years ago. If you want to undertake this journey: get Palms and Bloom and good luck -- the journey is worthwhile.
One of the best........2006-10-11
Stevens is an uncommon writer in that much of his greatest work he produced late in his lifetime. Perhaps its depth, maturity, and beautiful language result in some part from this fact. His poetry is delightful to read and hear, wrought with powerful imagery and provocative questions about art, the world, and reality. I find myself reading certain poems regularly, over and over again.
The Palm at the End of the Mind is a great collection, though it includes little more than Stevens' selected works - nothing in the way of comments, direction, or information about particular poems nor about Stevens and his views.
Incomprehensible.......2006-05-01
If poets aren't interested in being understood, they will have to resign themselves to being read by no one except English Lit drones. There was a time when poetry was so popular in the USA that many daily newspapers had daily poems and the average worker with a grade school education could recite several great American poems by heart. That was also the time when poets wrote about things that people experienced and could relate to. I love Whitman. I have a Masters degree. I can read Spinoza and the Greek dramatists and poets with pleasure. I started this book because Stevens was said to be a great poet. After forcing myself through twenty of these poems I still had no idea what any of them were about. I might as well have been reading Icelandic for all I got out of them. Here's an example of how Stevens unnecessarily obscures his poetry: in one poem, he refers to "the halo-John." This phrase never occurred before Stevens used it. Its appearance stops the reader as abruptly as if he had driven into a brick wall. Who or what is "the halo-John"? The reader searches through the rest of the poem for clues. Ok, it is a religious poem so maybe he means St. John the Evangelist because saints have halos. But why not just say "St. John"? "The halo-John" doesn't add anything to the poem. In fact, it detracts as the reader has to stop reading the poem in order to do the equivalent of a crossword puzzle exercise in order to proceed further. If the reader isn't christian, he may be completely out of luck. Stevens doesn't just do this sort of thing once or twice; his poems are full of this sort of nonsense. If a poem needs a commentary in order to appreciate it, the poem is a failure because this sort of poet is incapable of speaking to the reader without an intermediary, a literary priest to offer sacrifices for the poor, ignorant layman who has insufficient piety and intelligence to approach the divine mysteries of poetry on his own. The reader has his revenge, though. Poetry is unread. Poetry becomes irrelevant. Poets must either scrap with each other for literary prizes that mean the difference between starvation and three steady meals a day or slog away at teaching jobs since no one will buy their work. My copy of this book of poetry will meet its end in the dumpster.
Setting Art Against Nature.......2005-08-07
I was totally ignorant of Wallace Stevens until I came to Yale and took Professor Harold Bloom's course "How to Read a Poem." American poetry, as I, a Chinese student of a non-English major, understood it, is Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. In contrast, Wallace Stevens's name was strange to most Chinese intellectuals till recently. Even in his native country his rise to a canonical status was not immediate. Eliot's The Waste Land and Stevens' Harmonium debuted around the same time, but the former took all the spotlight. A mysterious "X" recurs in some of Stevens's letters and poems. This "X" refers to no other than Eliot, which may reflect a degree of frustration on the part of Stevens. Not until his late years did Stevens slowly but surely receive the recognition he deserved. A lagging effect in cross-lingual translation and interpretation may explain Stevens's relative invisibility to the Chinese audience. In addition, Stevens, especially in his later years, was highly meditative and philosophical, at times difficult and obscure, which also affected his accessibility to foreign readers.
Professor Bloom's class first initiated me into the force and beauty of Stevens's poetry. What intrigues me is that Stevens lived a double life. He was an insurance lawyer in profession and a poet in private, and seemed to have no difficulty alternating between the two seemingly incompatible roles. Just like his work is so original that they defy any easy label, Stevens's life is so eccentric that he contradicts the stereotype of what a poet is supposed to be like. This is particularly astonishing in the eyes of the Chinese, for in our tradition commerce and poetry have very little in common. Chinese poets are easily associated with scholars, officials, hermits, monks, artists, but it is hard to think of any example of successful poet-businessmen.
I especially love "The Poems of Our Climate," a short piece written in 1938, when the poet was 59 years old. It was a number of years on from "The Idea of Order in the Key West." For Stevens, it was a central poem. Stevens's poetic odyssey spanning over half a century was punctuated by two puzzling breaks: in 1898-1900, Stevens, a Harvard student poet, contributed regularly to Harvard Advocate. After he left Cambridge for New York, his poetry writing stopped short. After a complete silence of seven years when Stevens was struggling with his business career, in 1907 he began to present love songs to his muse Elsie Moll, and his creative faculty seemed to return. In 1923, Stevens, at the age of 44, finally published his first volume of poems, Harmonium. The book's poor reception and its author's growing domestic and corporate responsibilities almost led him to abandon poetry again. For four years Stevens published little. Not until 1929 did Stevens resume poetry writing. Like the Irish poet W.B.Yeats and the Chinese poet Du Fu, the bulk of Stevens's best work was not done until his late years. Interestingly, these three literary lions unanimously fall in love with the fall season: Yeats admires the trees in their autumn beauty in "The Wild Swans at Coole"; Du Fu composed a cycle of regulated poems under the general title of "Autumn Meditations"; Stevens' last major poetic endeavor is no other than "The Auroras of Autumn." These pieces actually reflect the poets' "autumnal personality." As they are approaching that season of their life, their works become increasingly sophisticated, retrospective and sublime. The following lines from John Keats' "Ode to Autumn" might be particularly pertinent to their situations:
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
"The Poems of Our Climate" was written in this "autumnal period" of the poet's life, thus belonging to the poetry of maturity. It is in three numbered sections. There is a break between each of the sections.
I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.
Stevens's difficulty often lies in referentiality. The first section seems to have nothing to do with the title. There is no direct reference whatsoever to either "poems" or "our climate." Ostensibly the poet-persona is watching a Japanese flower arrangement. Stevens had a passion for oriental arts and philosophies. He was a close reader of Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), and his library was full of all kinds of books about Japanese flower arrangement. He was not only deeply read in this subject, but also had a habit of ordering fresh flowers from shops. The opening sentence introduces the image of flower arrangement by creating a pleasing word picture of balance, harmony and form. "Clear water" seems to be redundant, yet this rhetorical excess emphasizes the crystalline transparency of water. "Brilliant" etymologically means "to emit light, to reflect light," thus accentuating the shiny surface of the container. The combination of "pink and white carnations" brings a festival of inviting colors and textures that are traditionally associated with feminine innocence, charm and gentility. The origin of the word "carnation" in Latin confirms the connection between the flower and human flesh. Behind this image of sexual provocation is a male observer's voyeuristic and fetishistic desire. The first sentence sketches the key components of a flower arrangement (through three nouns: water, bowl and carnations), with an emphasis on their optical and chromatic effects in the eyes of a spectator (through four adjectives: clear, brilliant, pink and white), and thus anticipates the "light" in the following sentence. "[...]. The light / in the room more like a snowy air, / Reflecting snow" embraces and extends the aura around the flower arrangement: the interior light is not like snow falling, but rather like air reflecting fallen snow. The observer is so subtle that he cannot help but elaborating the snow image: during the winter the afternoons have been very brief; but now, with afternoons elongating, winter is near the end and somehow meets early spring, and a fresh snow lies immaculate on the ground, like a breathtaking artwork of Nature, which gives a pure, refreshing and ethereal tone to the air reflecting snow. This late-winter scene suggests that the observer, like "the snowman," wants "a mind of winter," but not a mind of deep winter. The light that gives luster to the flower arrangement, like the rainwater that glazes a red wheelbarrow (William Carlos Williams, "A Red Wheelbarrow"), works beautifully on both formal and metaphorical levels. It represents a natural light, but as part of an art world it also becomes an aesthetic light.
So far the language is very pictorial, in the manner of a still life. When Stevens portrays an object, he often builds a simple yet powerful image, omitting all insignificant details. Therefore, his image is at once concrete and abstract, familiar and unfamiliar, and appropriately distances itself from reality. In the first stanza of "The Poems of Our Climate," the image is very concrete and real: this is about a Japanese flower arrangement. Meanwhile, there is no extravagant description of the object, but a word picture almost in the style of a Chinese xieyi ("to convey the spirit") painting. It highlights the principal components of the flower arrangement (water, bowl and carnations), and throws away lesser details (such as the spatial disposition of flowers, the effect of foliage). The aesthetic atmosphere is not only created by the description of the object itself; it is also a product of the language. To use minimalism to achieve maximal effect - this is also the case for the language. The diction is basic English words, mostly monosyllabic and disyllabic. Stevens only suggests and expects the reader to complete the picture by himself.
"Pink and white carnations" recurs verbatim in line 6, implying that the observer moves his meditative eyes back to the core image. Then the poem abruptly takes another direction: "One desires / so much more than that." This jump from imagistic to argumentative language is visually strengthened with the use of a hyphen to connect a noun phrase and a full sentence. Meanwhile, "desire" corresponds to the etymological hint of carnation, and the whole question about desire will continue to inform the rest of the poem. "The day" is in opposition to whatever "in the room," designating the world external to the flower arrangement. Thus "[...] The day itself / is simplified" suggests that art reduces the outside world. "[...] a bowl of white, / Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, / With nothing more than the carnations there." Once again, Stevens returns to visual imagery, but this is not a wanton repetition of the earlier lines, but rather a repetition with nuanced variations or a deliberate revision, as if the observer observes through a closer perspective. "Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round" introduces new details about the container and unmistakably echoes the "cold pastoral" in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." While "a bowl of white" seems a neutral description of what is seen, the "cold porcelain," just like Keats's cold urn, implies that this is a lifeless, artificial work. Although Stevens appreciates the aesthetic effect of the flower arrangement, subliminally he is not satisfied with its lifelessness and otherness to human world. He desires more: in the closure of the next stanza, he will repeat the word "more" thrice, where "more" becomes almost obsessive.
Now, get back to the title. How to justify "The Poems of Our Climate"? There are poets whose titles are throwaways, but not Stevens. Stevens cares a great deal about titles. His titles are always precise and integral to his poems. The first stanza seems to totally leave out the title, yet on a deeper level flower arrangement is a metaphor for poem writing. Metaphor is not an ordinary association of one object with another, but a figuration or trope which suggests the essence of one object by identifying it with certain qualities of another. Like Whitman, Stevens has an amazing command of figuration. For him, metaphor is a powerful means through which imagination imposes order on reality. "The Poems of Our Climate" opens with an objective description of clear water, brilliant bowl, pink and white carnations, and snowy light. As the poet is projecting his imaginary magic on those things, they will go through a metamorphosis and become metaphorical references to poetry writing, for both are the objects of formal arrangement, and both use delicate minimalism to achieve elaborate effect. Because this transfiguring act of mind is rooted in an objective world, the aura of duality shines through the images: they are at once flower arrangement and poetry writing. Indeed, what makes this poem "poetic" is the dynamic shifting back and forth between the real object and the metaphorical meanings it prompts.
II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.
Stevens desires "complete simplicity," but such "simplicity" is a trope for reduction and deprives him of the necessary pain and suffering in writing a poem. The capitalistic "I" is arresting, since Stevens always uses the impersonal "one" ("one" occurs four times in this stanza and six times in the whole poem), yet here he says "The evilly compounded, vital I." In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," "I" stands out again: "What am I to believe? ..." There is rhetorical power in the Stevensian "I," which is almost electrifying. It recalls Whitman's "real me" or "me myself" in "Song of Myself," for all these terms suggest a self that is one's consciousness but is a deeper and unknown part of one's consciousness. Stevens was very evasive about Whitman, one of his prime precursors. He never had anything good to say about Whitman in prose. Actually he blamed Whitman for Whitman's tramp persona. Yet, as Harold Bloom observes, "Whitman is a deeper and darker presence/absence in Stevens's work." Good poetry in any language always depends on allusiveness. This stanza echoes a couplet in "Song of Myself":
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me ...
As self-contradictory as the Whitmanian "real me" or "me myself," the Stevensian "I" is both "evilly-compounded" and "vital" (this word is never negative). Bloom unravels the paradox by arguing that "The `Vital I' is compounded evilly only because it is compounded at all." In other words, Stevens is talking about a radical duality of self or even a plurality of selves, on which he will not give a stable judgment. "Vital" is also to find its compelling resonance in "the never-resting mind" in the succeeding stanza. A critic believes that Stevens's inward peering "I" also implies its externally seeing homophone "eye." I agree with this insightful reading, for the whole poem is built upon the act of looking and seeing. "Still one would want more, one would need more, / More than a world of white and snowy scents" builds a crescendo of "mores" and reinforces the theme of desire. Stevens was from New Jersey and in his native language "scents" allegedly sounds like "senses," so here he might be making another homonymic pun.
In this stanza, "a world of white" recurs once more. This time, it is the word "brilliant-edged" that unfolds new information. The edge is between what two sides? Japanese flower arrangement draws materials from nature; meanwhile, it is cut and placed by people. Thus, it is a product of setting art against nature, so is poetry. The edge makes clear the dichotomy of art vs. nature. Fundamentally, high literature, especially poetry, is a continuous tradition. This poem explores a single motif that emerges again and again in a succession of strong poets - the relation between art and nature. Stevens is concerned with creating some shape of order in the wilderness and chaos of reality. On the other hand, he refuses to transform and harmonize reality at the cost of making violent imposition upon it. Shelley, in "A Defense of Poetry," realizes that "even the greatest poetry will, through time, become nothing more than signs for classes of thought, loosing its poetic edge as a result." To find the finer edge of words, Stevens urges us to get rid of the illusion of things and get to the truth. In Stevens's own words, "the hum of thoughts evaded in the mind." ("Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction")
This stanza is syntactically distinguished from the other stanzas for a single sentence runs through all seven lines, creating an extended "suspension system." The effect is to have the completion of meaning constantly delayed, and to make the delay a means of defamiliarizing the process of conferring meanings. "Say even that," like "more like" in line 3, is an American idiom, meaning "granted that." It introduces a concessive clause and distantly echoes the adverb "still" five lines later. This pair of connectives frames the whole sentence or stanza. While in the first stanza, imagery is the dominant device and noun structures prevail, this stanza is characterized by strong statements and powerful verbs. "Stripped," "concealed," "made it fresh" are positioned either at the beginning or the end of lines, and in sequence they make a set of structural parallels. This compels us to recognize their weight in the meaning-making process.
III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
If the last stanza closes with a litotes or an understatement in which one's desire is expressed by negating its opposite ("a world of white and snowy scents"), this stanza will directly address that keen desire of "the never-resting mind": "one would want to escape, come back / To what had been so long composed." Again and again in this poem, Stevens plays upon opposition and apposition. We have encountered "Stripped" and "concealed," "evilly-compounded" and "vital" before, and now the oxymoronic "escape" and "come back to" again force us to pause and think hard. "What had been so long composed" sounds like a Nietzschean cosmos, whose nut is hollow and lacking any purpose or unity. It also reminds us of the Shakespearean motto: "This is an art, which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature" (Winter's Tale).
"The imperfect is our paradise" invites multiple readings as well. The first thing comes to mind is the famous biblical allusion. Since the fall, Adam and Eve had been expelled from the perfect Eden and living in the far-from-perfect earth. So, from the start human beings are destined to accept imperfection as our living paradise. This sentence also echoes the Robert Browning quote "A man's reach should exceed his grasp," suggesting that poetry writing is a tantalizing project. To achieve artistic perfection, one should attempt even those seemingly impossible things, despite all necessary pains and suffering. Moreover, "imperfect" in Latin means "unfinished." By brings back the etymological meaning of "imperfect," Stevens revisits the Whitmanian theme: "Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end."
This imperfect world demands an imperfect language, that is to say "flawed words and stubborn sounds." The closing sentence starts with an imperative expression "Note that" and takes on the tone of an academic lecture. The shift of pronouns from "one" or "I" to "our" or "us" strengthens this sense of reaching out to others. As the poem moves towards closure, it is getting more and more disturbing, and the reader can feel a profound malaise on the part of the poet. Again, "bitterness" and "delight" are set in opposition, suggesting a puzzling psychic construction. "The imperfect is so hot in us" means the desire for imperfection is so fierce in us. "Hot" is used to contrast the earlier "cold" ("Cold, a cold porcelain"), and both words can apply respectively to their core meaning and extended meaning. "Lies" is an even more intriguing polyseme: delight tells us untruth in flawed words and stubborn sounds, and also consists in such words and sounds. In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," Stevens brings forward three fundamental functions of poetry: It Must Be Abstract; It Must Change; It Must Give Pleasure. So, he shares Shelley's view that joy is what poetry emanates from ("A Defense of Poetry"). Yet such a joy is achieved by flawed words and stubborn sounds, in other words, the stylistic eccentricity and strangeness in Stevens's word choice and his experiment with the musical quality of poetry.
Finally, in what sense do we know Stevens? Stevens is a poet of profound subjectivity. He is always working on wordplays, suggestions and subtlety. He is endless. We go down and down and down, and cannot reach the bottom, and would still want more and need more. He carries us so deep into nature and art and their intricate interplay.
At the end of the mind.......2005-04-19
Wallace Stevens is one of those rare writers who had a golden touch with words -- musical words, spellbinding imagery, and no boundaries to keep anyone from enjoying it. "The Palm at the End of the Mind : Selected Poems and a Play" brings together many of his best works, starting early in his writing career and stretching through the years.
Over his lifetime, Stevens wrote several books of poetry, but his exquisite poems are best taken by themselves: the languid splendour of "Sunday Morning," the spare eloquence of "Man With A Blue Guitar," and the hymnlike grandeur of "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle." ("I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,/No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits./But, after all, I know a tree that bears/A semblance to the thing I have in mind.")
This volume also contains his little-known one-act play, "Bowl, Cat and Broomstick." Like many of his non-poetic works, this play deals with the nature of poetry, and is in the form of a dialogue between three seventeenth-century characters. It's part parody, part analysis. And while it's a bit weird, it's certainly worth reading.
Wallace Stevens began publishing poetry at an importance time in writing history, when the older styles were falling away. But instead of ignoring one type of poetry in favor of another, he took the best of all kinds -- his verse combines Victorian opulance with the more modern free-form verse.
Though he isn't as well known as Yeats or Williams, Stevens' poetry is one of the few kinds that is both technically good and emotionally rich. His poetry can be whimsical ("Every time the bucks went clattering/Over Oklahoma/A firecat bristled in the way"), but it is also meditative and philosophical, even tackling the nature of reality.
If nothing else, Stevens' writing can be read just because it is exquisitely beautiful. He lavished details all over almost every poem he wrote; his style tends to be a bit on the ornate side -- Stevens freely uses the more exotic terms -- such as "opalescence," "pendentives" and "muleteers" -- wrapped up in complex verse, sometimes with a rhyme scheme and sometimes free-form.
"The Palm at the End of the Mind" is a wonderful collection of Wallace Stevens' most significant long poems, his underrated play, and his equally important smaller ones. A must-have.
Average customer rating:
- The only useful palm book
- Do More with Your Palm Pilot
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Palm @ Work & Play
Manufacturer: Global Book Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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MIS
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Manager's Guides to Computing
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ASIN: 1594570612
Release Date: 2004-01-12 |
Product Description
Get the most from your Palm, Clie, Visor device right out of the box. Presented in a clear, concise manor, this book features over 40 ways to capitalize your time, contacts, ideas & talents. Both beginners and veteran Palm users will benefit from the tips and tricks presented. What you read today, you can apply today. Outline speeches, keep a diary, track wedding plans, manages sales contacts, check shopping lists, car logs, and more. It also guides you on what to look for if you decide you need additional software. For all Palm powered devices using OS v3.0 or later.
Customer Reviews:
The only useful palm book.......2004-03-25
Best palm book, i didnt know i can do so many things with my palm, covers all details, and its very easy to understand!
Do More with Your Palm Pilot.......2004-03-06
'Palm @ Work & Play' is a practical, concise guide on how to apply your Palm to everyday life and save it from hanging out with the dust bunnies. This book is unique in that it is not a rehash of Palm's manual and it is not a bunch of programs and demos thrown together. The great part was that no other software was needed than the core ones that come standard with my Palm. I really enjoyed chapter 4 on how to use my Date Book function for tracking my job hunting efforts and keep a fitness schedule. Standing in a checkout line, or waiting for a bus has gone from wasted time to production, fun or relax time; author Courtney Thompson shows over 40 ways to do it. His love of education shows; he suggests how both teachers and students can Palm handhelds for scheduling, course outlines, and course content. Chapter 9 entitled 'Forward Thinking', has suggestions on possible future uses for Palm technology and asks the question: "Palm engineers, are you listening?". This book is a must read for every Palm user who really wants to get the most from their Palm handheld and get some great suggestions of how to do more with their Palm device.
Average customer rating:
- Detail galore
- Peasant Radicalization and Social Change in Bicol
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Agrarian Reform in the Philippines: Democratic Transitions and Redistributive Reform
Jeffrey Riedinger
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0804725306 |
Customer Reviews:
Detail galore.......2007-02-22
This book was well researched and provides exacting detail to support all the conclusions. It is a good reference for scholarly studies and articles, as much of the research came from the author's PhD studies. However, it is a slow read, a common malaise of many detail intensive books. Nevertheless, if knowledge of the actual accomplishments and the historic challenges of agrarian reform are needed, this book is very helpful.
Peasant Radicalization and Social Change in Bicol.......2000-10-22
This short work describes the implementation and effects of the National Democratic Front (NDF) agrarian reform program in a village in Bicol, the Philippines. It begins with a description of rural society and the history of attempts at land reform throughout the Philippines. It then describes the NDF reform programme in general and goes on to discuss its implementation in the community in detail. Garcia Padilla is clearly an NDF partisan, is unclear about his sources, and has a slightly faulty grasp of English - Agrarian Revolution is not a great scholarly work. Given the limited amount of information available about areas under New Peoples' Army control, however, it will be of interest to anyone concerned with land reform in the Philippines.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Pacific Affairs, published by University of British Columbia on June 22, 1996. The length of the article is 671 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Agrarian Reform in the Philippines: Democratic Transitions and Redistributive Reform.
Author: Philip F. Kelly
Publication:
Pacific Affairs (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1996
Publisher: University of British Columbia
Volume: v69
Issue: n2
Page: p288(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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