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Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow

Poem by Wallace Stevens

Poem by Wallace Stevens

"Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923 and is therefore still under copyright. However, fair use in scholarly commentary justifies its being quoted here.

My titillations have no foot-notes And their memorials are the phrases Of idiosyncratic music.

The love that will not be transported In an old, frizzled, flambeaud manner, But muses on its eccentricity,

Is like a vivid apprehension Of bliss beyond the mutes of plaster, Or paper souvenirs of rapture,

Of bliss submerged beneath appearance, In an interior ocean's rocking Of long, capricious fugues and chorals.

Interpretation

This is a love poem, or the closest approximation permitted by Stevens's sensibility and the indirection of his style, which renders his poems' semantics more or less opaque and often requires an unusually complex syntax. It may be compared to "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle", which can be understood to be about the travails of Stevens's marriage. If "Monocle" reflects on the difficulty of "transporting" love into middle age, "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts" muses on the eccentricity of his youthful love and may even suggest that it survives in some form, because of a strength like "an interior ocean's rocking", submerged beneath appearance.

References

References

  1. "Harmonium".
  2. (2006). "Erotics of Sound in Wallace Stevens". The Wallace Stevens Journal.
  3. (1997). "A Pluralistic Universe: Rereading Wallace Stevens's 'Harmonium.'". Irish Journal of American Studies.
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