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Matissean Decorative Art Elements in Wallace Stevens’ Late Poetry

The poetry of Wallace Stevens has many painterly aspects. In the early period the poet sees the outer world without preconceptions and depicts it as observed by the naked eye. But in his middle period he turns gradually from representing the outer world to expressing the inner world. He regards the focus on the surface as an evasion of ‘reality,’ and uses words for bold and abstract Fauve colors in search of the essence of things. He deploys those color words in different lines and stanzas as a way of balancing the poetic form, which is similar to the method of composition in Matisse’s paintings. Through this Stevens develops his painterly aspects into a Matissean decorative style in his late period. In his late poems, Stevens chooses a dominant color, an extremely simplified one, for each work, as a means of embodying his reductive perception in approaching ‘reality.’ He also puts intricate phrases in apposition to create rich imagery and vitality as in Matisse’s ‘paper cut-out’ works. However, Stevens continues to express his wish to provide the reader with pleasure and comfort through his ‘supreme fiction,’ which combines imagination and elements of actual life, in a similar way to that which Matisse adopts in his pursuit of an ‘artificial paradise’ through his works.