Valley Candle
Encyclopedia
Valley Candle is a poem from Wallace Stevens
's first book of poetry, Harmonium
. It is in the public domain according to Librivox, having been first published prior to the 1923 publication year of Harmonium.http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4077
"Valley Candle" is a spare and austere poem with Imagist virtues. It may be compared to "Domination of Black
", which also makes use of the colors of the night, though "Domination" is more emotionally charged. Its subject might be mortality ("My candle") and the traces that one's life leaves behind, but more importantly the poetry of the subject is the striking representation of the burning candle and the image it leaves behind, each given dramatic illumination by "beams of the huge night", each crisply snuffed out when the wind blew.
Whalen proposes that most critics see the poem as an allegory of the mind. The candle is ablaze with conscious life, or it has the illuminating power of the creative artist. It may be an apology for the imagination's slanted light, which will not sustain a heavy burden.
One interpretive choice point is whether "Valley Candle" should be compared to "Anecdote of the Jar
", as granting ordering power to the candle like the jar's. Rehder proposes the comparison. Both objects create the world from which they come; they are the fixed points, the centers, "necessary to change chaos to order and to communicate purpose." Whalen rejects the comparison.
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
's first book of poetry, Harmonium
Harmonium (poetry collection)
Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...
. It is in the public domain according to Librivox, having been first published prior to the 1923 publication year of Harmonium.http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4077
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"Valley Candle" is a spare and austere poem with Imagist virtues. It may be compared to "Domination of Black
Domination of Black
Domination of Black is a poem in Wallace Stevens' Harmonium, first published in 1916 and later selected by him as his best poem for the anthology This is my best....
", which also makes use of the colors of the night, though "Domination" is more emotionally charged. Its subject might be mortality ("My candle") and the traces that one's life leaves behind, but more importantly the poetry of the subject is the striking representation of the burning candle and the image it leaves behind, each given dramatic illumination by "beams of the huge night", each crisply snuffed out when the wind blew.
Whalen proposes that most critics see the poem as an allegory of the mind. The candle is ablaze with conscious life, or it has the illuminating power of the creative artist. It may be an apology for the imagination's slanted light, which will not sustain a heavy burden.
One interpretive choice point is whether "Valley Candle" should be compared to "Anecdote of the Jar
Anecdote of the Jar
"Anecdote of the Jar" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....
", as granting ordering power to the candle like the jar's. Rehder proposes the comparison. Both objects create the world from which they come; they are the fixed points, the centers, "necessary to change chaos to order and to communicate purpose." Whalen rejects the comparison.