Peter Quince at the Clavier (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Wallace Stevens
- First Published: 1915
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Philosophy or philosophers, Immortality, Music or musicians, Beauty, Emotions, Adultery, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Thought or thinking
The Poem
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” is made up of four lyrics of differing formal properties, and through them one senses that the poem has “movements,” as a musical composition often does. As in a sonata, the distinct parts involve changes of mood, tempo, and emphasis. This is one of the best-loved and most often recited poems of Wallace Stevens’s long career, perhaps because it handles, both playfully and seriously, ideas about art that are as suggestive as John Keats’s famous “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to...
[The entire page is 1560 words long]
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