Harmonium

Harmonium by Wallace Stevens, 196 pages

No word seems to describe Stevens' poetry as well as "sensuous".  His writing slides silkily over surfaces, vividly word-painting images in shapes and colors and smells and tastes.  His greatest strength is in his wordplay, toying masterfully with alliteration, repetition, repetition, and rhythm.  There's a great deal of playfulness on display - the collection includes poems insulting swans and "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle".  As a result, it is often difficult to differentiate between Stevens' sense and his nonsense, as his nonsense seems to enclose arcane secrets while his sense never seems entirely serious.

     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.

     I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,

     No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.

     But, after all, I know a tree that bears

     A semblance to the thing I have in mind.