A Foreign Song

No one would say that this man of ordinary, dull life is the author of one of the most unique poetic writings of the 20th century. When asked for a biographical blurb to introduce his work, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens refused to write it. He deeply believed that poetry is not personal and that the voice behind his poems was in fact the voice of an Other. Someone, in the distance, looks at the identical houses in the lonely suburbs of America. In the city of money, yesterday and today, a crowd walks restlessly. Faceless voices read fragments of the poet’s letters. A golden-feathered bird sings a song.