Bantam in Pine-Woods

"Bantams in Pine-Woods" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922 in the poetry journal Dial, along with five other poems, all under the title "Revue".^[1] It is in the public domain.^[2]

This poem can be read as a declaration of independence for American poetry. The new world's "inchling" poets^[3] are defiant towards the traditional literary canon, and particularly defiant against the unnamed, arrogant, self-appointed gatekeeper of literary tradition; they are confident instead in their own free powers of innovation in the New World. The poem can be compared to "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage" on Helen Vendler's interpretation of it as an expression of confidence in new American art. On this reading Chieftain Iffucan represents the canon, making a claim to universality and a privileged access to inspiration that is challenged by the Appalachian inchlings. The richness of tradition is conceded ("Fat!...."), but it is relativized ("Your world is you"). Nevertheless, a single poet is addressed but not identified in the poem; the possibility that that poet is T. S. Eliot, who emigrated from the New World to the Old World, problematizes whether the "canon" is or is not un-American.

Notes

1. ↑ Cook, p. 36
2. ↑ Buttel, p. 194. See also Librivox and the Poetry web site.
3. ↑ The word "inchling" is, in fact, a neologism coined by Wallace Stevens for this poem; the poet James Merrill made use of the word in his celebrated 1974 poem "Lost in Translation", in which themes from "Bantams in Pine-Woods" play an important subtext.

References

• Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
• Vendler, Helen. On Extended Wings. 1969: Harvard University Press.
• Cook, Eleanor. A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens. 2007: Princeton University Press.