Wallace Stevens obscure rhetoric in The Man with the Blue Guitar

Abstract

"Does it not seem that Stevens has always been trying to put down those tremendous statements, those tremendous statements heard in dreams?" When I first read this comment made by R.P. Blackmur about Stevens' poetry, I thought these words precisely described my first impression browsing my book for the first time, even just reading the strange-sounding titles of Stevens' poems. His peculiar rhetoric became object of my interest and study; my essay will revolve around precisely this "sense of strain between the discursive and imaginative functions fo language" that seems to permeate Stevens' poetry, analyzing on of his most peculiar poems in these terms, The Man with the Blue Guitar.