The Public Square

The Public Square

"The Public Square" is a poem from the secondedition [Stevens, H. p. 260] (1931) of
Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry,"Harmonium." It was firstpublished in 1923, [Buttel, p. 163] so it is one ofthe few poems in the collection that is not free of copyright, but itis quoted here in full as justified by fair use for scholarlycommentary.

The violence of an edifice's demolition is matched by the violence ofthe poem's language, particularly in the first two stanzas. Theslow-motion collapse is captured in the surreal atmosphere created bythe third stanza. The final stanza etches a precise image of thesquare's clearing.

The harshness of the poem can be compared to the brutal encounter withBerserk in "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks".

Buttel detects the influence of Cubism. [Buttel, p. 163]

Notes

References

  • Buttel, Robert. "Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium". 1967: Princeton University Press.
  • Stevens, H. "Letters of Wallace Stevens". 1966: University of California Press

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