2024-05-12 Mother's Day

【Earthy Anecdote (1918)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Every time the bucks went clattering

        Over Oklahoma

        A firecat bristled in the way.

        Wherever they went,

        They went clattering,

  &

2024-04-20 Volunteer Recognition Day

【The Poems of Our Climate - II (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        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,

       &nb

2024-02-25 Farewell to the God of Plague

【Le Monocle de Mon Oncle-IX (1918)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        In verses wild with motion, full of din,

        Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure

        As the deadly thought of men accomplishing

        Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate

2024-02-13 Lunar Goat Bliss Day

【On the Manner of Addressing Clouds (1921)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,

        Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,

        Eliciting the still sustaining pomps

        Of speech which are like music so profound

        T

2024-02-10 Lunar New Year

【Theory (1917)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

            I am what is around me.

            Women understand this.

            One is not duchess

            A hundre

2024-02-07 National Girls and Women in Sports Day

【Human Arrangement (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Place-bound and time-bound in evening rain

        And bound by a sound which does not change,

        Except that it begins and ends,

        Begins again and ends again—

 &

2024-02-02 Groundhog Day

【Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    Oh, that this lashing wind was something more

    Than the spirit of Ludwig Richter …

    The rain is pouring down. It is July.

    There is lightning and the thickest thunder.

    It is a spectacle. Scene 10 becomes 11,

    In

2024-01-28 Natl Daisy Day

【The Beginning (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    So summer comes in the end to these few stains

    And the rust and rot of the door through which she went.

    The house is empty. But here is where she sat

    To comb her dewy hair, a touchless light,

    Perplexed by its darker iridescences.

    Th

2024-01-28 Global Community Engagement Day

【Adult Epigram (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The romance of the precise is not the elision

        Of the tired romance of imprecision.

        It is the ever-never-changing same,

        An appearance of Again, the diva-dame.

—— • —— • —— • —— • ——

2024-01-26 National Big Wig Day

【Debris of Life and Mind (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    There is so little that is close and warm.

    It is as if we were never children.

    Sit in the room. It is true in the moonlight

    That it is as if we had never been young.

    We ought not to be awake. It is from this

    That a b

2024-01-23 National Handwriting Day

【The Good Man Has No Shape (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    Through centuries he lived in poverty.

    God only was his only elegance.

    Then generation by generation he grew

    Stronger and freer, a little better off.

    He lived each life because, if it was bad,

    He said a good li

2023-11-30 National Mousse Day

【The Poem as Icon (1954)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.

    We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground

    Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

    Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.

    And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,

    If they broke int

2023-11-29 Electronic Greetings Day

【Seventy Years Later (1954)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    It is an illusion that we were ever alive,

    Lived in the houses of mothers, arranged ourselves

    By our own motions in a freedom of air.

    Regard the freedom of seventy years ago.

    It is no longer air. The houses still stand,

    Though they are rigi

2023-11-18 National Vichyssoise Day

【The Plain Sense of Things (1952)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        After the leaves have fallen, we return

        To a plain sense of things. It is as if

        We had come to an end of the imagination,

        Inanimate in an inert savoir.

 &nb

2023-11-18 Apple Cider Day

【The Irish Cliffs of Moher (1952)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

      Who is my father in this world, in this house,

      At the spirit's base?

      My father's father, his father's father, his--

      Shadows like winds

      Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,

2023-10-23 9^th Day of the 9^th Lunar Month

【Solitaire under the Oaks (1955)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        In the oblivion of cards

        One exists among pure principles.

        Neither the cards nor the trees nor the air

        Persist as facts. This is an escape

        To principiu

2023-10-19 National Seafood Bisque Day

【Reality is an activity of the most august imagination (1954)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       Last Friday, in the big light of last Friday night,

       We drove home from Cornwall to Hartford, late.

       It was not a night blown at a glassworks in Vienna

       Or Venice, motionless, gathering time and dust.

       There was a crush of strength in a gr

2023-10-01 Chinese Natl Day

【Two Letters—A Letter To (1954)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        She wanted a holiday

        With someone to speak her dulcied native tongue,

        In the shadows of a wood…

        Shadows, woods…and the two of them in speech,

        In a secrecy of words

  &

2023-09-10 National Grandparents Day

【Children Learn What They Live (1954)】

Dorothy Law Nolte (1924-2005)

       If children live with criticism,

       They learn to condemn.

       If children live with hostility,

       They learn to fight.

       If children live with ridicule,

       They learn to be shy.

       If children live with shame,

    &

2023-07-31 National Avocado Day

【Of Modern Poetry (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The poem of the mind in the act of finding

        What will suffice. It has not always had

        To find: the scene was set; it repeated what

        Was in the script.

        Then the theatre was ch

2023-07-24 Cousins Day

【A Dish of Peaches in Russia (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        With my whole body I taste these peaches,

        I touch them and smell them. Who speaks?

        I absorb them as the Angevine

        Absorbs Anjou. I see them as a lover sees,

  &nb

2023-07-16 National Ice Cream Day

【Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour (1950)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Light the first light of evening, as in a room

        In which we rest and, for small reason, think

        The world imagined is the ultimate good.

        This is

2023-07-01 International Joke Day

【The Reader】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

            All night I sat reading a book,

            Sat reading as if in a book

            Of sombre pages.

            It wa

2023-06-30 World Social Media Day

【A Quiet Normal Life (1954)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         His place, as he sat and as he thought, was not

         In anything that he constructed, so frail,

         So barely lit, so shadowed over and naught,

         As, for example, a world in which, like snow,

         He b

2023-06-06  National Yo-Yo Day

【Sketch of the Ultimate Politician (1947)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         He is the final builder of the total building,

         The final dreamer of the total dream,

         Or will be. Building and dream are one.

         There is a total building and there is

         A total dream. There are words of this,

2023-05-04 National Orange Juice Day

【Sunday Morning·VII (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

        Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn

        Their boisterous devotion to the sun,

        Not as a god, but as a god might be,

        Naked among them, l

2023-04-19 National Hanging Out Day

【Sunday Morning·V (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        She says, “But in contentment I still feel

        The need of some imperishable bliss.”

        Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

        Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams

2023-04-15 World Art Day

【Sunday Morning·IV (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        She says, “I am content when wakened birds,

        Before they fly, test the reality

        Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

        But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

        Retur

2023-04-08 National All is Ours Day

【Sunday Morning·III (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.

        No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave

        Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.

        He moved among us, as a muttering king,

        Ma

2023-03-30 National Doctors Day

【Sunday Morning·II (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

        What is divinity if it can come

        Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

        Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

        In pungent fruit

2023-03-05 National Cheese Doodle Day

【Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs (1922)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,

        Tugging at banks, until they seemed

        Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,

     &nb

2023-02-19 National Chocolate Mint Day

【Bantams in Pine-Woods (1922)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan

        Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

        Damned universal cock, as if the sun

        Was blackmoor to bear your blazing tail.

 &n

2023-02-12 Super Bowl LVII: AFC Kansas City Chiefs vs. NFC Philadelphia Eagles

【Youth (1918)】

Samuel Ullman (1840—1924)

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease.  This

2023-02-05 Lantern Festival Symbolic of Good Luck & Hope

【A Rabbit as the King of Ghosts (1940)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       The difficulty to think at the end of day, 

       When the shapeless shadow covers the sun 

       And nothing is left except light on your fur? 

       There was the cat slopping its milk all day, 

    &n

2023-01-29 National Carnation Day

【Eight Significant Landscapes·II (1916)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

            The night is of the colour

            Of a woman's arm:

            Night, the female,

            Obscure,

     &n

2022-12-19 National Emo Day

【Esthétique du Mal·VII (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       How red the rose that is the soldier's wound,

       The wounds of many soldiers, the wounds of all

       The soldiers that have fallen, red in blood,

       The soldier of time grown deathless in great size.

       A mountain in which no ease is

2022-12-17 Wright Brothers Day

【Esthétique du Mal·VI (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       The sun, in clownish yellow, but not a clown,

       Brings the day to perfection and then fails. He dwells

       In a consummate prime, yet still desires

       A further consummation. For the lunar month

       He makes the tenderest research, intent

       On a transmutation which

2022-12-02 World Futures Day

【Esthétique du Mal·V (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Softly let all true sympathizers come,

        Without the inventions of sorrow or the sob

        Beyond invention. Within what we permit,

        Within the actual, the warm, the near,

        So great a

2022-10-16 World Food Day

【The Auroras of Autumn·V (1948)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       The mother invites humanity to her house

       And table. The father fetches tellers of tales

       And musicians who mute much, muse much, on the tales.

       The father fetches negresses to dance,

       Among the children, like curious ripenesses

  &nbs

2022-09-11 Never-Forget Day

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction—It Must Give Pleasure·V (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         We drank Meursault, ate lobster Bombay with mango

         Chutney. Then the Canon Aspirin declaimed

         Of his sister, in what a sensible ecstasy

         She lived in her house. She had two daughters, one

    &n

2022-07-09 National Sugar Cookie Day

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction—It Must Be Abstract·III (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         The poem refreshes life so that we share,

         For a moment, the first idea… It satisfies

         Belief in an immaculate beginning

         And sends us, winged by an unconscious will,

      &n

2022-06-28 the Stonewall Uprising of 1969

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction——To Henry Church (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        And for what, except for you, do I feel love?

        Do I press the extremest book of the wisest man

        Close to me, hidden in me day and night?

        In the uncertain light of single, certain truth,

&n

2022-04-15 Good Friday——2022-06-17 Juneteenth Weekend

【The Man with the Blue Guitar·XXXII (1937)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Throw away the lights, the definitions,

        And say of what you see in the dark

        That it is this or that it is that,

        But do not use the ro

2022-06-05 World Environment Day

【The Man with the Blue Guitar·XXXI (1937)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        How long and late the pheasant sleeps …

        The employer and employee contend,

        Combat, compose their droll affair.

        The bubbling sun will bubble up,

2022-05-15 National Chocolate Chip Day

【The Man with the Blue Guitar·XXVI (1937)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

             The world washed in his imagination,

             The world was a shore, whether sound or form

             Or light, the relic of farewells,

             Rock, of

2022-05-15 National Straw Hat Day

【The Man with the Blue Guitar·XXV (1937)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         He held the world upon his nose

         And this-a-way he gave a fling.

         His robes and symbols, ai-yi-yi —

         And that-a-way he twirled the thing.

        &

2022-05-02 Brothers and Sisters Day

【The Man with the Blue Guitar·XIX (1937)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        That I may reduce the monster to

        Myself, and then may be myself

        In face of the monster, be more than part

        Of it, more than the monstrous player of

 &

2022-04-23 National Picnic Day

【The Man with the Blue Guitar·XV (1937)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard

        Of destructions", a picture of ourselves,

        Now, an image of our society?

        Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg

2022-01-29 National Puzzle Day

【Peter Quince at the Clavier·IV (1915)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

            Beauty is momentary in the mind —

            The fitful tracing of a portal;

            But in the flesh it is immortal.

2022-01-17 MLK Day