"The
world of Wallace Stevens is a universe of particulars. His poet,
'any man of the imagination,'" inhabits the center, surrounded
by the vast disorder and richness of the physical world... In poetry
he achieves endless temporary alliances with his world, lives in the
instant finality of experience. In this 'immensest theater,' time is
represented by images of flowing away, of water, of wind, and of
human life from sleep to death... And from the welter of things in
flight the poet measures the velocities of change.' He marks the
ascents and delusions of both the world and his imagination:
'A
blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,
On
sidelong wing, around and round and round.
A
white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground.' "