`A Delightful Adjunct to Civilized Life'

I was in the university library on Tuesday waiting for an elevator when a librarian approached pushing a cart stacked with books. On top was Ideas of Order, by Wallace Stevens. It was the first edition, published by Knopf in 1936, 13 years after his first volume, Harmonium. The book is elegantly plain, unblemished by the tackiness marring book design today, and the sober cover is a pleasing contrast to the verbal flamboyance within.

I’m not covetous when it comes to first editions and other trophies of bibliomania, but I do enjoy the sensation of holding a rare volume I already love as literature, not as a commodity. In the Schaffer Library at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y., I leafed through first editions of Ulysses and Leaves of Grass and felt almost superstitiously reverent because they are books I know well and love. I also touched an early edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Mathematica, published in 1687, and while I was aware of the book’s age, importance and great value, I felt respect, not a worshipful tingle. I was impressed cerebrally, not emotionally, because I had never read the book and because Newton, despite his eminence, has never entered my private pantheon. Holding Ideas of Order for a trifling 10 seconds was a privilege, and it set off an immediate conditioned response to want to read Stevens again.

On Wednesday, William F. Vallicella at Maverick Philosopher posted “My Beef with Poetry” based on his reading of Stevens’ poem “The Latest Freed Man.” His initial reaction is reasoned and correct:

“One can see from this excerpt that Stevens is a very good poet indeed. And like most good poets, he knows enough not to send a poem on a prose errand, to borrow an apt phrase from John Ciardi. So one will look in vain for a clearly stated philosophical thesis packaged poetically.”

Vallicella then repudiates his own good sense and declares, “There is nonetheless philosophical content here.” He proceeds to critique the poem’s reputed “thesis,” citing Nietzsche and others, and writes:

“To come directly to my beef with poetry: what's the ultimate good of suggesting momentous theses with nary an attempt at justification? Of smuggling them into our minds under cover of delectable wordcraft?

“Poetry is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, but philosophy rules. It would be very foolish, however, to try to convince any poet of this.”

Vallicella seems to be reviving the old Platonic dismissal of poetry as the enemy of truth. His response is sour and beside-the-point. The best poetry is not about truth, at least not quantifiable truth, the sort a logician might respect. It is not by nature argumentative or didactic. Rather, a poem is a discrete addition to creation, something new and unprecedented in the world, like Stevens’ jar in Tennessee. When I held Ideas of Order in my hands, I anticipated the pleasure I would experience later that day while reading Stevens’ poems again. I gave no thought to their philosophical heft. If I want philosophy I read philosophy, not poetry; Santayana, not Stevens. In “The Reader,” from Ideas of Order, Stevens writes:

“The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.”

Is poetry “a delightful adjunct to a civilized life?” Of course, but so is philosophy, and embracing them is not an either/or proposition. Frank Wilson at Books, Inq. said it for me on Thursday: “If there is anything worthy of worship it [is] the mystery of being.”