Andrew Epstein

The Rhapsody of Things as They Are: Stevens, Francis Ponge, and the Impossible Everyday

N THE EARLY 1950s, a young Korean poet named Peter Lee sent Wallace Stevens a group of his own poems, triggering an extensive correspondence with the older poet, as well as several meetings in Hartford, Connecticut, where the two discussed poetry. 1 As Lee recalled, at one of their meetings Stevens gave him some intriguing advice: “When I asked him whom I should read he recommended Randall Jarrell and two French poets, Francis Ponge and Rene Char” (qtd. in Brazeau 137). Ever since Stevens made his famous remark in “Adagia” that “French and English constitute a single language” (CPP 914), if not before, readers have acknowledged the poet’s Francophilia and abiding interest in all things French, so it is not surprising to learn that Stevens named French poets in response to his young admirer’s request for tips on whom to read. But Francis Ponge? The avant-garde writer who became famous for his strange prose poems devoted to humble everyday objects, like a candle, cigarette, or pebble? In spite of the similarities between Stevens and Ponge, the two poets have rarely been mentioned in the same breath. Even though Stevens scholarship has long grappled with a wide range of issues related to the poet’s interest in France and French literature, the parallels between Stevens and Ponge have gone virtually unnoticed, despite this tantalizing clue that Stevens knew and admired the French poet’s work. 2 Twenty-five years younger than Stevens, Ponge began publishing his idiosyncratic prose poems in the 1920s and 1930s and quickly became affiliated with the Surrealist movement. Although he forged important friendships with poets like Andre Breton and Paul Eluard, Ponge was determined to go his own way, steering clear of close attachment to any particular avant-garde communities or political movements, despite a relatively short-lived and unsatisfying stint as a member of the Communist Party. During World War II, Ponge took part in the Resistance, continuing to write poems while hiding in the countryside and assisting the Underground. In 1942, he published his groundbreaking and best-known volume, Le Parti pris des choses, usually translated as Taking the Side of Things (for one such translation, see The Voice of Things). Suddenly, Ponge

The Disruptive Power of Ordinary Things

Maurizia Boscagli’s sophisticated and wide-ranging book explores the instability and the radical potential of everyday things (which she calls “stuff ”) in a culture of consumption and spectacle. Informed by and responding to the new materialism that has emerged across various disciplines, Stuff Theory strives to develop a new theoretical model to explain how we now live with and among things. Boscagli examines an array of examples from various media, time periods, cultures, national traditions, and aesthetic lineages, offering provocative readings of an intriguing group of works, and providing some useful new ways of thinking about the sheer strangeness and complexity — and even the liberating potential — of our daily interaction with material objects.