Apr '03 [Home] 12 Wallace Stevens and the Other Guitarist: Conjecture on the Model for "The Man with the Blue Guitar" Before Music Martin Willitts, Jr. The Guitar Player Toorenvliet, Jacob Leiden (1640-1719 Leiden) Copper, 23.5 x 17.8 cm, Private Collection The artist often used this model in his paintings. The Man With the Blue Guitar Wallace Stevens One The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." And they said to him, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, A tune upon the blue guitar, Of things exactly as they are." Two I cannot bring a world quite round, Although I patch it as I can. I sing a hero's head, large eye And bearded bronze, but not a man, Although I patch him as I can And reach through him almost to man. If a serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are, Say that it is the serenade Of a man that plays a blue guitar. Three A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar; Ourselves in tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place Of things as they are and only the place As you play them on the blue guitar, Placed, so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere; For a moment final, in the way The thinking of art seems final when The thinking of god is smoky dew. The tune is space. The blue guitar Becomes the place of things as they are, A composing of senses of the guitar. Four Tom-tom c'est moi. The blue guitar And I are one. The orchestra Fills the high hall with shuffling men High as the hall. The whirling noise Of a multitude dwindles, all said, To his breath that lies awake at night. I know that timid breathing. Where Do I begin and end? And where, As I strum the thing, do I pick up That which momentarily declares Itself not to be I and yet Must be. It could be nothing else. According to received wisdom, Picasso's Blue Period (1903) guitarist was the model for the Stevens poem, but is either instrument blue, either player unmistakably a shearsman?

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~ . ~ Before Music Martin Willitts, Jr. 1 Before music, there was no sound, the universe was speechless as an unplucked harp defiant in the void and not hearing the wake-up call, the alarm setting creation in constant motion. Before then, there was nothing and no one was listening. 2 On a white-hot night you can hear the rumble of heat like folding chairs snapping, the body oozing quarter notes, no breeze, uncomfortable blasts full of jazz flames, the explosion of new suns, the rustling of anger, the clash of cymbals, then creation is exhausted. We can almost smell fresh wet clay. This is how life began. 3 There is no sweeter sound than two lovers stroking as violins, or a baby's trombone cry. Before there was music, silence was an empty cathedral and chaos was parched trees. 4 When a woman heard man's heart terrified of his own darkness, she invented a drum to capture it. When man heard woman's softness coaxing strawberries into tasting like love, he fluted stars to whirl around her halo. The music of life, beginning. A chorus of hope in laughter and no incomplete deaf notes. 5 I pour water over my frenzied body trying to cool my body temperature. No sleep is in the forecast. I am restless as a piccolo, disturbed as Amadeus, refreshed as orange juice, faint as a lover's smile, distant as the stilled wind, lost as forgiveness, sudden as the embarrassed applause, gone as a fish escaping the hook. 6 Anxiety jitterbugs across dissatisfied continents, language twirls with skirt flying, bobby socks white as expectation, flash of legs of misunderstanding. We pick up conversation asking for names in the swirl of dance floor partners. The continued swaying, mating rituals always this frantic, the crude introductions, slow dancing through assurances or fast dancing to intimacy. When the band stops playing, no longer waltzing on the edge, the final note held delicately between interconnected hands as a hint of music in the soft kiss, our mind holds a filled dance card, a wild card of tomorrows, a tarot card of a fool in love wearing awkward ballet slippers ready to swan-leap into the orchestra pit of love or twisted tubas of divorce. 7 The sun is a terrible moan. The land is eroded by tides, Silence before us is unexplored. The intestines of roads betray us. We try to escape the labyrinth. There's a black hole in our heart where the music should be. Dark birds migrate into our faces lifting the night canvas, but our heart will not be starless. The universe is alive with secret language. ~ . ~ ( Martin Willitts Jr.'s piece, "Before Drawing," another in this series, appeared in the magazine's May '02 feature, Poems on Paintings. Other work appeared in Sep '02, Dec '02, and Jan '03. Mr. Willitts is a Children's Librarian in upstate New York. Just awarded the 2003 John Cotton Dana Award for library publicity, he is the author of three chapbooks.)