The Man With the Blue Guitar

The Old Guitarist, by Pablo Picasso (1903-04)

The Man With the Blue Guitar is a poem published in 1937 by Wallace Stevens. It is divided into thirty-three lengthy sections, or cantos, and takes the form of an imaginary conversation with the subject of Pablo Picasso's painting The Old Guitarist, which Stevens likely viewed when it was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1934. But Stevens insisted this influence was only peripheral. In a letter dated July 1, 1953, to Professor Renato Poggioli, who had recently translated his poem into Italian, Stevens wrote: "I had no particular painting of Picasso's in mind and even though it might help to sell the book to have one of his paintings on the cover, I don't think we ought to reproduce anything of Picasso's."

In the poem, an unnamed "they" says, of the titular man, "you do not play things as they are", sparking a prolonged meditation on the nature of art, performance, and imagination.

Stevens began writing the poem in December 1936, not long after his completion of the poetry collection Owl's Clover in the spring of that year. "The Man With the Blue Guitar" became his most successful long poem to date, and William Carlos Williams wrote at the time that he considered it one of Stevens's best works.

Michael Tippett based his guitar sonata, The Blue Guitar (1984), on selected stanzas: 19, 30, and 31, from the poem. It is one of the most integrated examples of combining image, music, and poetry. Other composers have made similar attempts but with much less convincing results.