April 15: Wallace Stevens’s “A Dove in the Belly”

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9 Responses to “April 15: Wallace Stevens’s “A Dove in the Belly””

1. valarie napawanetz says:

   April 15, 2011 at 9:11 am

   All that is beautiful in nature, more real than this hand that types here, this world of appearance, this dove in the belly, is all that matters, all there is. When I lie dying, the last thought I will have will be the warmth of sunlight across my arms as we paddle silently down the river, connected by that shimmering expanse of green that reflects the sky, our love for one another, and for this world.
2. Melvin Rosenberg says:

   April 15, 2011 at 11:24 am

   It comes as a nearly lethal surprise to be joyfully confronted with a Stevens poem I have never read. I have had the mistaken notion that I have read all of his work. But I’m afraid I have been partial to the “think tank” poems, such as Aesthtique du Mal, The auroras of Autumn, Notes toward a Supreme Fiction. Thank you for helping me discover my error. I will try to mend my wats
3. R. L. Lyons says:

   April 15, 2011 at 1:17 pm

   Wallace Stevens’ “A Dove in the Belly,” asks us to reverently pause and listen to our inner voice. And, in listening we can perceive our world or countryside with a more universal sense.

   With this power to visualize metaphorically, many levels of humanity and nature are open to us. The panorama of life shines brighter than its mundane appearance.
4. Ada Aharoni says:

   April 15, 2011 at 3:38 pm

   This moving poem, Wallace Stevens’s “A Dove in the Belly” has made me realize something in me I knew was there, but could not concretely put into form or words.Wallace Stevens has helped me open the cage and let my own white dove fly freely in the wind. This deep recognition of the link between the inner dove in my belly and the outside beauty of nature, has enriched my intuition and my world. Thank you dear Poet Stevens. You are invited to peruse my own poems on my Homepage at: http://www.iflac.com/ada and Blog: http://www.iflac.wordpress.com
5. Daniel W.Fulmer says:

   April 16, 2011 at 6:22 am

   How truly full of wonder is it that different people can vary so widely on what a poem means to them. Here on just this small column of comments we find a person who sees joy only in material nature and another who experiences it in the inner immaterial space of soul. Will we ever liberate ourselves from the tyranny of of one meaning? Of the fallacy of authorial intention? Stevens’ goal says the editor is poetry itself; others say it’s imagination. Maybe those are stand ins for a divine power….says I.
6. R. L. Lyons says:

   April 18, 2011 at 11:50 am

   Very little stands in for the universal spirit of humanity. This poem shows that we can grow and mature, by letting, to paraphrase Mr. Stevens if I may, let excellence collect excellence.

   And when we have gathered our full measure, perhaps we will become like those spoken of by P.B. Shelley in “Asia,” closing the Second Act of “Prometheus Unbound”
   “…We have passed Age’s icy caves,
   And manhood’s dark and tossing waves,
   And Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
   Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
   Of shadow-people Infancy,
   Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
   A paradise of vaulted bowers,
   Lit by downward gazing flowers
   And watery paths that wind between
   Wildernesses calm and green.
   Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
   And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
   Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously.”

   Thank you, poets of the Universe.

   R.L.L.
7. Melvin Rosenberg says:

   April 18, 2011 at 2:28 pm

   I dislike having to tell you that Wallace Stevens has been dead now for many years. By many critics he rank extremely in the realm of modernist poetry. His first book, Harmonium, is as much a landmark as Eliot’s The Waste Land and Pound’s Cantos.
   This is for Professor Aharoni.
8. Lloyd Haft says:

   April 5, 2012 at 8:07 pm

   As a former worshipper at a church of the Eastern Rite, I suggest that ONE thing this ‘dove’ refers to can be the Holy Spirit…If you go to http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/2936, you will find an old Russian icon of the Trinity showing a dove (symbolizing the Holy Spirit) apparently emerging from the ‘belly’ of Jesus, who is sitting on God the Father’s lap.
   This hooks up to another apparently unknown Stevens reference: the ‘Old Man Hoon’ mentioned in Stevens’ ‘Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz,’ I seriously believe, is a transcription of ‘ho-oon,’ the Greek for ‘the One who is,’ that being the name God gives to himself in the Septuagint version of Exodus 3:13 to 14, when Moses asks him what his name is.
9. Lloyd Haft says:

   April 7, 2012 at 5:39 pm

   Sorry folks, in my previous comment I misquoted ‘Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz.’ I wrote ‘Old Man Hoon.’ It should have been ‘mountain-minded Hoon.’