The Planet on the Table
The Planet on the Table - context Summary
Published in 1950 Collection
Published late in his career, this short poem appears in The Auroras of Autumn and stages Stevens’s recurrent concern with imagination, poetic creation, and the unity of self and world. The speaker, Ariel, values poems not for fame but as genuine "makings" that reflect both his inner self and the solar, external source. The work emphasizes art’s capacity to register character and partial affluence within limited language rather than enduring legacy.
Read Complete AnalysesAriel was glad he had written his poems. They were of a remembered time Or of something seen that he liked. Other makings of the sun Were waste and welter And the ripe shrub writhed. His self and the sun were one And his poems, although makings of his self, Were no less makings of the sun. It was not important that they survive. What mattered was that they should bear Some lineament or character, Some affluence, if only half-perceived, In the poverty of their words, Of the planet of which they were part.
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