Essay - Steven's Le Monocle American Modernist Poet Wallace Stevens Published His...

Steven's Le Monocle

American Modernist Poet Wallace Stevens published his first book of poetry in 1923 called Harmonium. T***** initial collection which contained a number of W*****llace's famous poems such as "Sunday Morning" and "The Emperor ***** Ice Cream" also included the 12 stanza poem "***** Monocle de Mon Oncle" (Elliott 984). Like much of Stevens' poetry, "Le Monocle" is a challenging poem for readers and scholars to define and explicate.

***** Harmonium was Stevens' first ***** of poetry, his style ***** already mature and has been compared ***** ***** famous names in the world ***** British poetry as Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. In America, Stevens' work is frequently commented on in light of Emerson, Whitman, ***** Williams. H***** work has also been compared to works ***** Modernist Art ***** an attempt to define ***** ideas and principles. However, as Elliott writes:

Helpful ***** discussion of those connections may be, ***** poems, in ***** end, have to be taken, one by *****, on their own, and read as *****st as we can read them. Like all great cultural inventions or creations, they appear in their essential features m*****e or less out ***** nowhere. (986)

Scholars admit to the difficulties with Stevens' poems. Despite the problems *****re are certain thematic issues that do re-appear in many of his poems including "***** Monocle."

***** Monocle" is concerned with the "interaction ***** imagination ***** reality, or mind and world" (Elliott 986). Furthermore, the exploration of poetic language and poetic forms play out in th***** poem. Stevens ********** use so***** ***** his standard motifs ***** this piece such as color, seasons, ***** sun/moon, and rabbis in this work giving scholars an opportunity to explore these ***** across ********** (Elliott 987).

However, "'Le Monocle' has impressed most readers as a genuinely original *****" ***** it contains "discontinuous, even disjunctive forms as shattered mirrors of ***** preoccupations in the modern consciousness" (MacCaffrey 115). The t*****le, ***** *****dicates the speaker, previews the problems that the reader will face from this *****ist viewpoint. We ***** presumably an older man, the uncle, viewing experiences through a monocle. By necessity ***** point of view is going to be distorted ***** force the reader out of a comfort zone, an idea which Stevens perpetuates through his subversion of traditional poetry's take on love and *****.

To get at these modernist ide*****, the first ***** *****s with several conventions of ***** poetry and then proceeds to mock them. ***** the first four lines, which are ***** responded ***** in ***** following seven lines, a muse ***** sorts is invoked. ***** f*****cetiously refers to her as "Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds" (I, 1). He follows this by references to the sun and moon ***** further elevate the importance of the muse before bringing her crashing down in the speaker's comments about her and himself. The speaker is concerned ***** language ***** conveying words to the audience ***** would again suggest traditional poetry (***** *****16).

*****, Stevens trivializes that lofty form by