Wallace Steven's Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction

St up to nows proposes that rime replace God, and suggests an alternative to prayers and hymns that celebrate Palm Sunday and Christ's entry into Jerusalem, suggesting an appreciation of the fun principle, of paganism, and implying that the more we deny that aspect of life, the more it asserts itself.

Stevens uses the dramatic powers of his dustup to suggest that the "supreme fiction lies in the difference among a take a hop and a wink" (Glaser). He even begins the verse form with the words, "Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame," to emphasize the point. He establishes a tone which is derisive of the old woman's faith and suggests she construct a "baroque masque in a peristyle to embody the rarify contortions of her Christian metaphysics," wh

At the leftover of the poem, Wallace returns to his skepticism of the presence of her Christianity, and gets down to its roots (Glaser).

With "Such a tink and tunk and tunk-a-tunk-tunk," Stevens' idea that the sound of words can " intensify poetry's spiritual force" is used to reduce the sonority of the poem at this point. There is a world of difference betwixt a wince and a wink in the emotions they all(prenominal) verbalise, and this is expressed in the different sounds of the words, which are similar, but express different emotions, high and low (tink and tunk). Turning a wince into a wink is the business of supreme fiction - poetry (Glaser).

Lancashire, Ian. "Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). A High-Toned Old Christian Woman." 2003. 25 Oct. 2005.

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