Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
Trees Trees, proud standing people stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying glorious attention, breathing light. strength shelter timeless confidence bending and firm comforting rooted chorus line dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds framing bursts of stars tender rugged celebration absorbing and releasing life each holy branch holding the power of the Universe. There.
Interpretation
This quote celebrates the majesty and strength of trees as symbols of life and connection to the universe.
Wallace Stevens' quote personifies trees, depicting them as proud beings that connect with the sky and embody strength and resilience. It emphasizes their vital role in the ecosystem and their ability to nurture and support life, illustrating the interconnectedness of nature and the universe through vibrant imagery and poetic language.
In practice
During a nature hike, I quoted Stevens to highlight the beauty of trees.
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
LIGHT FROM WITHIN my friend, cancer got you damn it: you had it beat for seven years at least. how did it come back? Why all that pain. again. and you, such a fighter you fought me over and over with tears and words and promises. you fought for me with honesty and a light so bright it hurts my heart. sweet lorna. at peace now finally no more battles, just light from within a flickering candle in the dark burns with you.
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.
It's only in winter that the pine and cypress are known to be evergreens.
It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet's life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it's very hard to understand why we haven't taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by.
A giraffe is so much a lady that one refrains from thinking of her legs, but remembers her as floating over the plains in long garb, draperies of morning mist her mirage.
To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -- is a wonder beyond words.
No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.
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