The Public Square

Poem by Wallace Stevens

"The Public Square" is a poem from the second edition[1] (1931) of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923,[2] so it is one of the few poems in the collection that is not free of copyright, but it is quoted here in full as justified by fair use for scholarly commentary.

The Public Square

> A slash of angular blacks
>  Like a fractured edifice
>  That was buttressed by blue slats
>  In a coma of the moon.

>  A slash and the edifice fell,
>  Pylon and pier fell down.
>  A mountain-blue cloud arose
>  Like a thing in which they fell,

>  Fell slowly as when at night
>  A languid janitor bears
>  His lantern through colonnades
>  And the architecture swoons.

>  It turned cold and silent. Then
>  The square began to clear.
>  The bijou of Atlas, the moon,
>  Was last with its porcelain leer.

The violence of an edifice's demolition is matched by the violence of the poem's language, particularly in the first two stanzas. The slow-motion collapse is captured in the surreal atmosphere created by the third stanza. The final stanza etches a precise image of the square's clearing.

The harshness of the poem can be compared to the brutal encounter with Berserk in "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks", with which it shares an architectural motif.

Buttel detects the influence of Cubism.[3]

## Notes[edit]

1. ^ Stevens, H. p. 260
2. ^ Buttel, p. 163
3. ^ Buttel, p. 163

## References[edit]

* Robert Frost. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
* Stevens, H. Letters of Wallace Stevens. 1966: University of California Press

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Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

* "Earthy Anecdote"
* "Invective Against Swans"
* "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"
* "The Plot Against the Giant"
* "Infanta Marina"
* "Domination of Black"
* "The Snow Man"
* "The Ordinary Women"
* "The Load Of Sugar-Cane"
* "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle"
* "Nuances of a Theme by Williams"
* "Metaphors of a Magnifico"
* "Ploughing on Sunday"
* "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges"
* "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores"
* "Fabliau of Florida"
* "Doctor of Geneva"
* "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile"
* "The Comedian as the Letter C"
* "From the Misery of Don Joost"
* "O Florida, Venereal Soil"
* "Last Looks at the Lilacs"
* "The Worms at Heaven's Gate"
* "The Jack-Rabbit"
* "Valley Candle"
* "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"
* "The Apostrophe to Vincentine"
* "Floral Decorations for Bananas"
* "Anecdote of Canna"
* "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds"
* "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb "
* "Of the Surface of Things"
* "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks"
* "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman"
* "The Place of the Solitaires"
* "The Weeping Burgher"
* "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician"
* "Banal Sojourn"
* "Depression Before Spring"
* "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
* "The Cuban Doctor"
* "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"
* "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
* "Sunday Morning"
* "The Virgin Carrying a Lantern"
* "Stars at Tallapoosa"
* "Explanation"
* "Six Significant Landscapes"
* "Bantam in Pine-Woods"
* "Anecdote of the Jar"
* "Palace of the Babies"
* "Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs"
* "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow"
* "Cortège for Rosenbloom"
* "Tattoo"
* "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws"
* "Life Is Motion"
* "The Wind Shifts"
* "Colloquy with a Polish Aunt"
* "Gubbinal"
* "Two Figures in Dense Violet Night"
* "Theory"
* "To the One of Fictive Music"
* "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion"
* "Peter Quince at the Clavier"
* "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
* "Nomad Exquisite"
* "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad"
* "The Death of a Soldier"
* "Negation"
* "The Surprises of the Superhuman"
* "Sea Surface Full of Clouds"
* "The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade"
* "Lunar Paraphrase"
* "Anatomy of Monotony"
* "The Public Square"
* "Indian River"
* "Tea"

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