Wallace Stevens and Walking the Landscape

I’m reading, or actually rereading, Living in the Nature Poem by Mary Harwell Sayler, and I’m taken by this poem:

Landscape Loved by Wallace Stevens

If you could fly over \ yards and yards

of green lace lining the Gulf and Space

Coasts, you would see low-lying bands

of land seeding the sea with pockets blue –

beaded with water, and you’d wonder how

one more word could fit into the shell –

shaped pattern, hemmed with canals, and

not unravel beneath the weight of so many

people pushing the delicate fabric, poking

the intricate design, picking at flaws not

found in winter-bound spools of wool.

That landscape is more than familiar; it’s personal. I grew up near the Gulf Coast; I’m familiar with the Space Coast. I’ve flown over area enough to recognize those “low-lying bands of land seeding the sea.” And I know those coastal skies, close cousins to the skies you find in the great Dutch paintings.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetspeakPoetry.

Photograph: One of the hiking trails at Shaw Nature Reserve, southwest of St. Louis.