Abstract

With the work of Joseph Riddel, J. Hillis Miller, and Harold Bloom, the inadequacies of Modernist readings of Wallace Stevens begin to become apparent. Poetry: Open to Interpretation takes up their call for a linguistically conscious reading of Stevens in an attempt to account for three sets of relations: the relation between Modernist prescriptions for poetry and Stevens' canon; the relation between the constituents of Stevens' poems and the ways in which his poems seem to frustrate Modernist standards for poetry; the relation between the short poem and the long poem. The name I give each of these relations is dismemberment. ;By discussing a series of Stevens' shorter poems against the background of a Heideggerian understanding of the workings of language, the first three chapters investigate the role of poetic reduction , rejection of transcendental justifications, and mutual implication of the poet and his world. These investigations disclose the role of nothingness, absence and human existence in the constitution of Stevens' poetry. They also delineate the boundaries of the human universe of those poems. The mutual implication of the poet and his world makes it possible for Stevens' readers to make a shift from epistemological concerns to ontological issues. Furthermore, the mutual implication of the poet and his world finds its measure in language. With an understanding of the constitution of Stevens' poetry, the last two chapters address two ways in which Stevens dismembers Modernist conceptions of poetry: through his examination of language and through his exploration of openness in his poetry. The referentiality, reflexivity, and materiality of language are brought into play as Stevens, especially in "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven," meditates on the reciprocal incompatible aspects of these three ways of treating language. Finally, in chapter five, Stevens questions the standard of closure. "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" refuses Modernist integral wholeness, completeness, and consistency as criteria for judging its poetry. The openness of poetry enabled by this dismemberment is an openness to positive possibilities