Stevens - So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch

I’m back now from a delay I should have expected, but didn’t, and now I’m wireless to boot.  So, in that spirit, I’m posting one of my favorite poems from Stevens.  I hope it fares better than did poor old Lowell.  And, at no extra charge, himself reading it, though I’ve never really cared all that much for his reading voice. 

  

So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch

Wallace Stevens

  

On her side, reclining on her elbow.

This mechanism, this apparition,

Suppose we call it Projection A.

She floats in air at the level of

The eye, completely anonymous,

Born, as she was, at twenty-one,

Without lineage or language, only

The curving of her hip, as motionless gesture,

Eyes dripping blue, so much to learn.

If just above her head there hung,

Suspended in air, the slightest crown

Of Gothic prong and practick bright,

The suspension, as in solid space,

The suspending hand withdrawn, would be

An invisible gesture. Let this be called

Projection B. To get at the thing

Without gestures is to get at it as

Idea. She floats in the contention, the flux

Between the thing as idea and

The idea as thing. She is half who made her.

This is the final Projection C.

The arrangement contains the desire of

The artist. But one confides in what has no

Concealed creator. One walks easily

The unpainted shore, accepts the world

As anything but sculpture. Good-bye

Mrs. Pappadopoulos, and thanks.