Last Looks at the Lilacs

Last Looks at the Lilacs is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, "Harmonium". It was first published in 1923 and is therefore still under copyright. However, fair use in scholarly commentary justifies its being quoted here.Robert Buttel compares this poem to "The Plot Against the Giant" as concerning the humorous disparity between gauche male and suave female. [Buttel, p. 24] Robert A. Wilson makes a surprisingly plausible case (in a single-page article in "The Wallace Stevens Journal", complete with an image of the label from a bottle of "Lilac Vegetal" after-shave lotion) for a connection between the poem and Stevens's experience at a barber shop. [ "I would like to posit the theory that the source of these terms and associations stem from Stevens’ getting a haircut. I can recall as a child seeing an astringent called “Lilac Vegetal” on barbers’ shelves. The unusual name of the label always stuck with me, but I never came across the term vegetal again until I read Stevens’ poem. Could he have recalled this label in writing a poem invoking the fragrance of lilacs? Could the “bloom of soap” be a figurative transformation of shaving lather? A most intriguing mystery. Below is a label from one of these bottles." (Wilson, p. 182)]

Caliper'd reason, measuring everything but appreciating nothing, is contrasted unfavorably with well-booted imagination, as in Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd" or indeed the very poem under discussion. Lilacs can be connected to the fragrance of vegetal or to a cool night's fantastic star, but Stevens favors the latter and the final stanza shows why.

Notes

References

• Buttel, R. "Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium". 1968: Princeton University Press.
• Bates, Milton. "Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self". 1985: University of California Press.
• Wilson, Robert A. "A Note on 'Last Looks at the Lilacs'". "The Wallace Stevens Journal". Volume 16 Number 2 (Fall 1992)