Stevens’s best work may be found in the three Others anthologies, edited by Alfred Kreymborg. Some of it is penetrative, more than a little is puzzling and all of it is provocative. In spite of what seems a weary disdain, Stevens is a more than skilful decorator and, like T. S. Eliot, combines irony and glamour in a highly original idiom.
PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER
I
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,