Reviews for Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose

The average rating for Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-11 00:00:00 P. Silverman Poems in this book were published after his death. They were not included in other works. Here are a few I liked: Blanche McCarthy by Wallace Stevens Look in the terrible mirror of the sky And not in this dead glass, which can reflect Only the surfaces - the bending arm, The leaning shoulder and the searching eye. Look in the terrible mirror of the sky. Oh, bend against the invisible; and lean To symbols of descending night; and search The glare of revelations going by! Look in the terrible mirror of the sky. See how the absent moon waits in the glade Of your dark self, and how the wings of stars, Upward, from unimagined coverts, fly. Of Mere Being by Wallace Stevens The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises In the bronze decor, A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy. The bird sings. Its feathers shine. The palm stands on the edge of space. The wind moves slowly in the branches. The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down. My favorite part was a collection of his aphorisms. Here are some samples: In poetry at least the imagination must not detach itself from reality. All poetry is experimental poetry. The poet must put the same degree of intentness into his poetry as, for example, the traveller into his adventure, the painter into his painting. To read a poem should be an experience, like experiencing an act. Money is a kind of poetry. It is not every day that the world arranges itself in a poem. One does not write for any reader except one. Every man dies his own death. A poet looks at the world somewhat as a man looks at a woman. The world is the only thing fit to think about. Poetry is the sum of its attributes. Poetry is the scholar's art. When one is young everything is physical; when one is old everything is psychic. The tongue is an eye. A poem is a pheasant. Reality is a vacuum. The body is the great poem. The purpose of poetry is to contribute to man's happiness. God is a postulate of the ego. Literature is based not on life but on propositions about life, of which this is one. God is in me or else is not at all (does not exist). Loss of faith is growth. Poetry is a search for the inexplicable. Ignorance is one of the sources of poetry. Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush. A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have. Wallace Stevens called "The Emperor of Ice Cream" his favorite. It "wears a deliberately commonplace costume,and yet seems to me to contain something of the essential gaudiness of poetry; that is the reason why I like it." When Stevens received the National Book Award for poetry in 1951, he heard some people complain if any of the writers were as good as Sir Walter Scott. But WS believed "It is not a question of comparative goodness." Modern poetry is always different. WS: "Inability to see much point to the life of an ordinary man. The chances are an ordinary man himself sees very little point to it." Much of the book was not interesting except for those who are interested in finding out all they can about the author, which is why I read it.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-06-25 00:00:00 Michael Hester simply awesome. i pick this book up and open it randomly whenever i need to reset my perspective on life. always works.