Meaning is subjective

Closed reading of the text Developed during the modernist era Ignores the past works and biography of the author Looks for the best meaning of the work Played a role in creating I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, David Daiches, William Empson, Murray Krieger, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren,R. P. Blackmur, Ausin Warren, and Ivor Winters.

Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream

Curds represent what society deems to be unclean and thus below recognition In actuality curds make many dairy, like cheese yogurt and ice cream Wallace Stevens point is not to discount what seems to be irrelevant biology.clc.uc.edu

According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning

Pieter Bruegel Objective? Subjective: “a farmer was pouching / his field” (Williams 4- 5) “the whole pageantry / of the year was / awake tingling” (Williams 6-8) “unsignificantly” (Williams 16)

“I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond/ all this fiddle./” “Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one/ discovers in/ it after all, a place for the genuine.” “these things are important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because/ they are/ useful” “we do not admire what we cannot understand:”

“the bat/ holding on upside down or in quest of something to/ eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless/ wolf under/ a tree,” “when dragged into prominence by half poets, the/ result is not poetry” “Literalist of the imagination” “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” “if you demand on the one hand/ the raw material of poetry in/ all its rawness and / that which is on the other hand/ genuine, you are interested in poetry.”

The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

-- the “wall” Frost discusses would be better visualized as a fence. -- As the narrator and the famer walk and talk to one another they maintain their own side making sure not to cross one another’s path. “Good fences make good neighbors.” -- The narrator seems confused as to why the fence is put up, thinking that a fences only purpose is to keep subjects like animals in or out.

Leda Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down of his soft breast uncurls his coral feet. Through the deep purple of the dying heat of sun and mist, the level ray of sun-beam has caressed the lily with dark breast, and flecked with richer gold its golden crest. Where the slow lifting of the tide, floats into the river and slowly drifts among the reeds, and lifts the yellow flags, he floats where tide and river meet. Ah kingly kiss – no more regret nor old deep memories to mar the bliss; where the low sedge is thick, the gold day-lily outspreads and rests beneath soft fluttering of red swan wings and the warm quivering of the red swan's breast.

All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God's daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.

Background: Leda was the mythological mortal raped by the god, Zeus in form of swan. Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda. Doolittle wrote Leda as if it weren't a rape. She uses imagery to describe the act, “The slow lifting of the tide, floats into the river and slowly drifts”. The lily represents a woman and the swan a man. Helen is about Greece's hatred towards her because they believe she caused the Trojan war. It is about a statue of her and the constant reminder of all the hurt she caused. They hated looking at her all the time and it only made them hate her more. Complimentary of paragonfineart.com Complimentary of commons.wikimedia.org

wikimedia.org paragonfineart.com biology.clc.uc.edu " The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 7th Edition. Vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007.