2025-06-11 National Making Life Beautiful Day

【Primordia in the Carolinas 7 (1917)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.

        Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.

        Already the new-born children interpret love

        In the voices of mothers.

      &nb

2025-04-26 National Pretzel Day

【Eight Significant Landscapes·V (1916)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

            Wrestle with morning-glories,

            O, muscles!

            It is useless to contend

            With falling mountains.

—— • —— 

2025-03-23 World Meteorological Day

【Headache (1913-1915?)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The letters of the alphabet

        Are representations of parts of the head.

        Ears are q s

        L s are the wrinkled skin between the eyes

        In frowns.

2025-02-19 International Tug of War Day

【From a Junk (1914)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        A great fish plunges in the dark,

        Its fins of rutted silver; sides,

        Belabored with a foamy light;

        And back, brilliant with scaly salt.

        It glistens in the flapping wind,

&nb

2024-10-18 National Mashed Potato Day

【Six Significant Landscapes·IV (1916)】 

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

             When my dream was near the moon,

             The white folds of its gown

             Filled with yellow light.

             The soles of its feet

             Grew red.

        &nb

2024-10-10 National Cake Decorating Day

【The Auroras of Autumn·VI (1948)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

It is a theatre floating through the clouds,

Itself a cloud, although of misted rock

And mountains running like water, wave on wave,

Through waves of light. It is of cloud transformed

To cloud transformed again, idly, the way

A season changes color to no end,

Except the lavishing of itself in change,

As light changes yellow into gold and gold

To its opal elements and fire's delight,

&

2024-03-31 Easter Day

【The Wind Shifts (1917)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        This is how the wind shifts:

        Like the thoughts of an old human,

        Who still thinks eagerly

        And despairingly.

        The wind shifts like this:

        Like a hu

2024-03-03 National I Want You to Be Happy Day

【Le Monocle de Mon Oncle-X (1918)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The fops of fancy in their poems leave

        Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,

        Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

        I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.

2024-02-16 Lunar Human Day

【Gray Room (1917)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    Although you sit in a room that is gray,

    Except for the silver

    Of the straw-paper,

    And pick

    At your pale white gown;

    Or lift one of the green beads

    Of your necklace,

    To let it fall;

    Or gaze at your green fan

&n

2023-12-31 New Year's Eve

【Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu (1936)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

    That would be waving and that would be crying,

    Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,

    Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,

    Just to stand still without moving a hand.

    In a world without heaven to follow, the stops

    Would be endings

2023-11-23 Thanksgiving Day

【Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself (1954)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        At the earliest ending of winter, 

        In March, a scrawny cry from outside 

        Seemed like a sound in his mind. 

        He knew that he heard it

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

2023-08-30 National Toasted Marshmallow Day

16-Day|6-Port Canada-Greenland by Caribbean Princess

(“公主·加勒比”号16天|6个景地加拿大—格陵兰之旅 08/14/2023—08/30/2023)

【Desiderata (1927)】

Max Ehrmann (1872-1945)

(Stanza 9 of 9)

         With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

         It is still a beautiful world.

         Be cheerful.

         Strive to be happy.

—— • —— •

2023-06-17 World Juggling Day

【The Planet on the Table (1953)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Ariel was glad he had written his poems.

        They were of a remembered time

        Or of something seen that he liked.

        Other makings of the sun

2023-05-28 Pentecost

【Farewell to Florida·III (1935)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       I hated the weathery yawl from which the pools

       Disclosed the sea floor and the wilderness

       Of waving weeds. I hated the vivid blooms

       Curled over the shadowless hut, the rust and bones,

       The trees likes bones and the leaves half sand, half sun.

       To stand here o

2023-05-20 World Whisky Day

【Farewell to Florida·II (1935)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       Her mind had bound me round. The palms were hot

       As if I lived in ashen ground, as if

       The leaves in which the wind kept up its sound

       From my North of cold whistled in a sepulchral South,

       Her South of pine and coral and coraline sea,

       Her home, not mine,

2023-05-14 Mother's Day

【Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly (1952)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

           Among the more irritating minor ideas

           Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home

           To Concord, at the edge of things, was this:

           To t

2023-05-06 Intl No Diet Day

【Sunday Morning·VIII (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        She hears, upon that water without sound,

        A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine

        Is not the porch of spirits lingering.

        It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”

        We live in

2023-04-29 National Peace Rose Day

【Sunday Morning·VI (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Is there no change of death in paradise?

        Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs

        Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,

        Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,

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

2023-03-18 National Awkward Moments Day

【Sunday Morning·I (1923)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

        Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

        And the green freedom of a cockatoo

        Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

        The holy hush of ancie

2023-03-12 National Girl Scout Day

【Tatoo (1916)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The light is like a spider.

        It crawls over the water.

        It crawls over the edges of the snow.

        It crawls under your eyelids

        And spreads its webs there--

     &nb

2023-03-05 National Absinthe Day

【7 of 9 Primordia in the Carolinas (1917)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.

        Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.

        Already the new-born children interpret love

        In the voices of mothers.

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 World Whale Day

【Domination of Black (1916)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       At night, by the fire,

       The colors of the bushes

       And of the fallen leaves,

       Repeating themselves,

       Turned in the room,

       Like the leaves themselves

       Turning in the wind.

       Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlock

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,

2023-01-21 National Hugging Day

【Esthétique du Mal·XIV (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       Victor Serge said, "I followed his argument

       With the blank uneasiness which one must feel

       In the presence of a logical lunatic."

       He said it of Konstantinov. Revolution

       Is the affair of logical lunatics.

       The politics of emotion must appear

2023-01-15 Festival of Kitchen God

【Esthétique du Mal·XIII (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       It may be that one life is a punishment

       For another, as the son's life for the father's.

       But that concerns the secondary characters.

       It is a fragementary tragedy

       Within the universal whole. The son

       And the father alike and equally are s

2023-01-08 National English Toffee Day

【Esthétique du Mal·XII (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       He disposes the world in categories, thus:

       The peopled and the unpeopled. In both, he is

       Alone. But in the peopled world, there is,

       Besides the people, his knowledge of them. In

       The unpeopled, there is his knowledge of himself.

       Which is more

2023-01-01 New Year's Day

【Esthétique du Mal·XI (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Life is a bitter aspic. We are not

        At the centre of a diamond. At dawn,

        The paratroopers fall and as they fall

        They mow the lawn. A vessel sinks in waves

        Of people, as big-bell

2022-12-30 National Bacon Day

【Esthétique du Mal·X (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        He had studied the nostalgias. In these

        He sought the most grossly maternal, the creature

        Who most fecundly assuaged him, the softest

        Woman with a vague mustache and not the mauve

2022-12-25 Christmas Day

【Esthétique du Mal·IX (1945)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       Panic in the face of the moon — round effendi

       Or the phosphored sleep in which he walks abroad

       Or the majolica dish heaped up with phosphored fruit

       That he sends ahead, out of the goodness of his heart,

       To anyone who comes — panic, because

       The moon is no longer

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

2022-08-20 National Radio Day

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction—It Must Chang·VI (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        Bethou me, said sparrow, to the crackled blade,

        And you, and you, bethou me as you blow,

        When in my coppice you behold me be.

        Ah, ké! The blood

2022-08-20 Harmony Day

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

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       On a blue island in a sky-wide water

       The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear,

       Long after the planter's death. A few limes remained,

       Where his house had fallen, three scraggy trees weighted

       With

2022-08-20 World Mosquito Day

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction—It Must Chang·IV (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         Two things of opposite natures seem to depend

         On one another, as a man depends

         On a woman, day on night, the imagined

         On the real. This is the origin of change.

         Winter

2022-08-14 Victory-over-Japan Day

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

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         The great statue of the General Du Puy

         Rested immobile, though neighboring catafalques

         Bore off the residents of its noble Place.

         The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse

      &nbs

2022-08-14 Vigil of Assumption

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction—It Must Chang·II (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The President ordains the bee to be

        Immortal. The President ordains. But does

        The body lift its heavy wing, take up,

        Again, an inexhaustible be

2022-07-30 International Friendship Day

【Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction—It Must Chang·I (1942)】

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

         The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets

         Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves

         Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.

         The Italian girls wore jonquils in their hair

    &n

2022-07-30 International Friendship Day

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

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        The major abstraction is the idea of man

        And major man is its exponent, abler

        In the abstract than in his singular,

        More fecund a

2022-07-30 International Friendship Day

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

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       The romantic intoning, the declaimed clairvoyance

       Are parts of apotheosis, appropriate

       And of its nature, the idiom thereof.

       They differ from reason’s click-clack, its applied

       Enfl

2022-07-23, Dog Day

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

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

       Can we compose a castle-fortress-home,

       Even with the help of Viollet-le-Duc,

       And see the MacCullough there as major man?

       The first idea is an imagined thing.

       The pensive giant prone in violet space

2022-07-23, National Day of the Cowboy

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

Wallace Stevens (1879—1955)

        It feels good as it is without the giant,

        A thinker of the first idea. Perhaps

        The truth depends on a walk around a lake,

        A com

2022-07-16 National Bridal Sale Day