Harold Bloom recites Stevens’ marvelous poem “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon”. Here is the video, below is Stevens’ text.
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
The last two stanzas — “In the far South” through “leaping flame” — aren’t part of “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon.” They’re the first stanza of another, longer poem, “Like Decorations at a Nigger Cemetery.”
Ooops. Broken open my copy and turns out yr right. I’m too lazy to type out all the poems so I check for the availability of online poems. Where was my mind though?
Thanks Larry.