The Poetic Music of Wallace Stevens

Description

Wallace Stevens’s musicality is so profound that scholars have only begun to grasp his ties to the art of music or the music of his own poetry. In this study, two long-time specialists present a polyphonic composition in which they pursue various interlocking perspectives. Their case studies demonstrate how music as a temporal art form may affect a poetic of ephemerality, sensuous experience, and affective intensification. Such a poetic, they argue, invites flexible interpretations that respond to poetry as an art of textual performance. How did Stevens enact the relation between music and memory? How can we hear his verse as a form of melody-making? What was specific to his ways of recording birdsong? Have we been missing the latent music of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Claude Debussy in particular poems? What were the musical poetics he shared with Igor Stravinsky? And how is our experience of the late poetry transformed when we listen to a musical setting by Ned Rorem? The Poetic Music of Wallace Stevens will appeal to experts in the poet’s work, students of Modernism in the arts, and a wider audience fascinated by the dynamics of exchange between music and poetry. Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introduction: Musicking Stevens 1 Aims and Theoretical Inspiration 2 Stevens as Listener 3 Compositional Principles and Overview 4 Final Notes Works Cited Chapter 2: The Enigmatic Relation Between Music and Memory 1 Musings on Memory and Music 2 Critical Considerations 3 Poems of Music and Memory Works Cited Chapter 3: The Challenge of Inventing Modern Melodies 1 Introduction 2 The Art of Sounding Wrong: A Test Case 3 Theorizing and Analyzing Melody in Poetry 4 Material Units on a Vertical Axis 5 Combining Units on a Horizontal Axis 6 Meter, Rhythm, and Pacing 7 The Question of Quality in Melodies 8 Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 4: The Lifelong Lure of Birds and Their Song 1 Of Old and New Birds 2 Figurations of Movement and Sound 3 A Poetics of Relation 4 Counterpointing Calls and Responses Works Cited Chapter 5: The Vibrations of Latent Music: Juxtaposing Stevens with Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Paul Hindemith, and Claude Debussy 1 Overture: Adagio molto, senza espressione 2 Marcia Funebre: Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen 3 Intermezzo: Andante teneramente 4 Concertino for Poet and Orchestra: Moto perpetuo 5 Capriccio: Animé, aussi légèrement que possible 6 Prelude and Fugue: Triste et lent Works Cited Chapter 6: Shared Aspects of a Musical Poetics: Juxtaposing Stevens with Igor Stravinsky 1 A Story of Musical/Poetic Chairs 2 Two Contemporaries Reflect on Modern Art Making 3 Converging Poetics 4 Sharing a Musical Poetics in Verse Works Cited Chapter 7: Learning from Composers: Ned Rorem’s Last Poems of Wallace Stevens 1 Forms of Attraction 2 Poetry’s Performability, Music’s Multiplying Mutations 3 Situating Ned Rorem 4 Genesis and Components 5 Analysis of an Artistic Exchange 6 A Shared Aesthetic of Living as and Where We Live 7 Encore Works Cited Index