Like Light

The photographer much like the poet finds himself necessarily under a certain situation: This situation is set by a pair of undeniable facts-that he exists in reality, and that his imagination inevitably transforms it. This was Roy H. Pearson talking about the poet Wallace Stevens.

“The acute intelligence of the imagination, the illimitable resources of its memory, the power to possess the moment it perceives-if we were speaking of light itself, and thinking of the relationship between objects and light, no further demonstration would be necessary. Like light, it adds nothing, except itself… To be at the end of fact is not to be at the beginning of imagination but it is to be at the end of both. The poet must get rid of the hieratic in everything that concerns him and must move constantly in the the direction of the credible.” Wallace Stevens