Anti-Poetry
There are those who maintain that both the aesthete and sensualist readings overlook the American burgher in Stevens, the successful insurance executive possessed of "something of the mountainous gruffness that we recognize in ourselves as American — the stamina, the powerful grain showing in a kind of indifference." This character trait may be reflected in the element of anti-poetry in Stevens's work, as in his choice of the word 'stupid' in Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores, or the "tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk" of A High-Toned Old Christian Woman.
"There are in Stevens many moments rich in beauty," Robert Rehder writes, "but he does not want them to be too sweet and resists 'the bawds of euphony'." Stevens's fondness for American locale helps him temper many such moments. A poem like The Jack-Rabbit illustrates his affection for rural and frontier America and the native folk tradition, leaving no doubt that his poetry is rooted in America. Poems like Ploughing on Sunday. The Doctor of Geneva, and Bantam in Pine-Woods are an implicit tribute to Walt Whitman and other American poets, including himself, making evident his pride in the poetic revolution taking place on the North American continent. Indian names are another aspect of Stevens's Americana, as in the title of Stars at Tallapoosa. Movement away from European influences and toward the responsibility of writing distinctly American poetry may be traced to Anecdote of the Jar (1919).
Bates suggests that Stevens the American burgher was self-conscious about the poses of aesthete and dandy, writing,
It is as though Stevens, having assumed the pose of aesthete, had suddenly caught sight of himself in a mirror; thereafter, his dismay and amusement became an integral part of the pose. The same might be said of his dandiacal poems, for the dandy is by definition someone who lives always as though reflected in a mirror; the dandy's vaunted wit sprang in the first place from an awareness of his own absurd pretensions. Further compounding the aesthetic dandy's self-consciousness, in Stevens' case, was his burgherly sense of his own foppish creations.
Allen Tate suggests a different interpretation in maintaining that Stevens's dandyism was "the perfect surface beneath which plays an intense Puritanism". The burgher does not look on with ironic dismay, but rather uses the poses to achieve reticence about self-disclosure. The poses allow modulation in revelation of the poet and his world. Tony Sharpe expresses a similar thought when he refers to Stevens as "that exponent of American loneliness."
Read more about this topic: Harmonium (poetry Collection)