the reader became the book...

Wallace Stevens

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm


The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

*

Stevens refused the presence of any overt autobiography in his writing … yet his works clearly define the man, the psychological and emotional weathers of personal being, as much, if not more so, than a poet who sets out to tell his or her story in verse. I’m thinking of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg. By that I in no way mean to negate their vast and necessary contributions. Simply this, I can and do identify with Stevens’ work in a very personal way because his focus was the universal – yet he allowed room for the personal … the reader leaning late and reading there.

This poem describes my inner life – at least one distilled and perfect moment – in as complete a view as is possible.