I see connections between the two poems and I will highlight some of the text of ON THE ROAD . . . with a view to signposting the route, as I see it, to the connections and thereby to the finding of the poet's 'points of view' as I like to think of them, and thereby towards understanding.
ON THE ROAD HOME
It was when I said,
"There is no such thing as the truth,"
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.
You . . . You said,
"There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth."
Then the tree, at night, began to change,
Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.
It was when I said,
"Words are not forms of a single word
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";
It was when you said,
"The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth";
It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.
_______
Wallace Stevens
It is poetry like this which makes me sad that I no long belong to a poetry discussion group. It asks to be taken apart and discussed Gwilym.
ReplyDeleteIt does indeed. The poem's title is a good one, is it not?
ReplyDeletewhat are the two stated philosophical positions of the
ReplyDeletespeakers? How might people typically react if someone said to them, “there is no
truth, or what you think of as a large, singular Truth--that doesn’t exist”? How do
the people in this poem react? Why? What is the tone of the last stanza of the
poem?
The questions you ask are for each to answer for himself, but I think my reply to Weaver of Grass in the post previous to this and the reply of Dominic Rivron to another of my Wallace Stevens posts where Rivron talks about an octopus opening a jam jar might have some bearing on the matters raised.
ReplyDelete