After the Fall: Poems Old and New

Mrs. Wallace Stevens

Mrs.Wallace Stevens My poor Neil has to put up with me like Wallace Stevens’ wife, who finally had enough of the famous-poet act and drew a line through the center of the house— on one side of it his domain, the other side hers, making her a freak in the eyes of history, while Stevens it celebrates as the ultimate aesthete, poet of chamber music, the Master. The trial of living with a poet— I sympathize with her totally, as I’m sure Neil does too: we’re all ego and career-driven and every once in a while deserve a good kick in the ass, fat ass in the case of Wallace, skinny in mine. Who better justified to let loose with a good one than the long-suffering partner, especially Mrs. Stevens, living with a grandee of the poetry world, making his high and mighty pronouncements, the poems playful and charming and musical, yes, but . . . as if his socks didn’t smell and no skid marks on his underwear— she held her nose picking them up from where he dropped them. That part of his life never got into his poetry, in his infuriating way taking his comforts for granted— life’s bourgeois pleasures all there just for him. Ah, I could have told her he was the typical poet, no worse a snob, no more selfish than the rest of us. Or maybe just a little more. But with her dividing line through the house, Mrs. Stevens formalized the great poet’s split between his dirty underwear and his mind, the line that goes right through his poetry as well. 38 And if she simmered, she stood by her choice, the lowlier, if more human, role, as my dear Neil does— it’s one of the things I admire him for, his sense of his own territory, refusing to be intimidated by my self-important poetry scene, though in our case, not drawing any line— luckily, since we live in one room, not the sprawling suburban home of our most genteel of poets. If Mrs. Stevens terrorized Wallace in her own way, I’m sure he adored her even more for it, as I do you, sweetheart, for her resistance, her stubborn defiance, for she did for him what nobody else could, what he kept secret from the world— no, not wash his socks and underwear, which was just her part of the bargain— she made him laugh. 39 ...