alien point-blank green

ARRIVAL AT THE WALDORF

Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf.
This arrival in the wild country of the soul,
All approaches gone, being completely there,

Where the wild poem is a substitute
For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.

You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight
Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra
Hums and you say “The world in a verse,

A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains,
Women invisible in music and motion and color,”
After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.

— Wallace Stevens, Parts Of A World (1942)

Yesterday afternoon was the 18th Wallace Stevens Birthday Bash at Hartford Public Library. Guest speaker Bonnie Costello featured this poem in her talk entitled "Traveling with Wallace Stevens." In his work as a surety bond lawyer for the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., Stevens traveled extensively in the U.S. for a time, but he never traveled farther than Key West.