Sunday Morning (poem)
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"Sunday Morning" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium. Published in part in the November 1915 issue of Poetry, then in full in 1923 in Harmonium, it is now in the public domain.[1]
Themes
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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 ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,. . . . And in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
About this poem Stevens wrote that it was "simply an expression of paganism."[2] This ethos could be characterized as a refined post-Christian paganism that infuses the natural order with transcendental qualities, a trope typical of Stevens' work. The poem presents a sympathetic reaction to the Christian impulse for immortality and a transcendent realm.[3][4] The woman with whom the poet is in dialogue seems to feel the impact of Jesus's sacrifice, and is tempted to see it as a token of "imperishable bliss", but she is eventually brought round:
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."
In later printings the poem concludes with an image of a flock of pigeons in flight. In the original publication in Poetry magazine, this image and the stanza that contains it were positioned immediately following the first stanza of the poem [citation needed].
Buttel reads "Sunday Morning" as a refutation of the Attendant Spirit in Milton's Comus, a poem which asserts the heavenly over the earthly.[5] He also sees the poem as establishing Matisse as "a kindred spirit" to Stevens, in that both artists "transform a pagan joy of life into highly civilized terms."[6]
Notes
- ↑ Bates, p. 126. Buttel p. 230. See also Librivox [1] and the Poetry web site.[2] Editor Harriet Monroe chose five of the eight cantos Stevens sent her for the journal Poetry in 1915.
- ↑ Holly Stevens, p. 290.
- ↑ The Voice of Religious Questioning: Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning" [3].
- ↑ Perspectives in American Literature Chapter 7: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) [4].
- ↑ Buttel, p. 223
- ↑ Buttel, pp. 157-8
References
- Bates, Milton. Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self. 1985: University of California Press
- Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
- Stevens, Holly. Letters of Wallace Stevens. 1966: University of California Press.
