poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

This poem is truly a masterpiece. It has no aparent structure or rhyme, but when read aloud it causes the reader to step outside of one's self. (Or inside yourself as Stevens would probably say.)

Stephens was an atheist. But as a kind of quasi-surrogate god, Stephens substitued human solidarity-within-community. "Soliloquy" is a concise statement of that "creed". To the extent that there is a god, that god is constituted of the active human imagination, and the incarnation of that god is the huiman community. So "being there together is enough". We need nothing else, for there is nothing else to need.

JIM