Words at Play

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Words at Play: Different interpretations ofWallace Stevens A

Dish of Peaches in Russia and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a

Blackbird.

I-Introduction

This paper attempts to investigate different deconstructionist interpretationsof the above mentioned poems by Stevens. A Dish of Peaches in Russia suggeststhree distinctly different interpretations. The first one is seen at the surfacestructure; it is simply a dish of peaches. The second one is based on an image ofa sexually attractive woman, a dish. The third is seen through an image of agroup of intellectuals, peaches. The title Thirteen ways of Looking at aBlackbird is suggestive. The poem creates a new linguistic field of speculative

exploration. Though the blackbird receives different interpretations each section, itis perhaps the only unifying symbol which relates the thirteen sections, regardlessthe fact that they are characterized by diversity and dispersal. The blackbirdrepresents mans line of vision and thought, changeable all the time.

II-Deconstructioni-Deconstruction, Structuralism, and Interpretation

In page 19 of his book Allegories of Reading: Figural Language inRousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust, published in New Haven by YaleUniversity Press in 1979, Paul de Man sees that the rigorous unreliability of the

language of criticism and literature can fairly describe the term deconstruction. Theparadoxical phrase "rigorous unreliability" questions all conventional rules takenfor granted by critics and readers. Therefore, de Man maintains that:"Deconstruction is the active antithesis of everything that criticism ought to be ifone accepts its traditional values and concepts." (qtd in Norris xi). In fact,deconstruction rejects readymade concepts used in the assessment of any piece ofwriting. Moreover, it stresses the point that any reading of a text is a preface to thenext one. Moreover, a

deconstructive reading not only questions the old commentary'srefined repetition or doubling of the work, but also refuses the

traditional violation of the text that links it to an outside. Noconnection exists between "real" biographical events, "authentic"history and phenomena, "actual" metaphysical entities, and thetext at hand. Deconstruction stays within the text because thereis nothing else: biography, history, and metaphysics are alwaysalready written. Written into the (inter)text.


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Broadly speaking, a writer works in a linguistic and culturalsystem which his own discourse cannot completely dominate.Up to a point he goes along with the constituted codes.Deconstructive reading, therefore, "must always aim at a certainrelationship, unperceived by the writer, between what hecommands and what he does not command of the patterns ofthe language that he uses".... The intention of the author,conscious or unconscious, does not guide Derridean deconstruction.Often enough, a strand of thought, left undeveloped in an author'stext, provides Derrida with material to deconstruct a pattern ofconcepts or a textual system. The author is a name.

The formula for deconstructive reading is: repeat and under-mine. The conventional repetition of the text, minutely andlaboriously accomplished, establishes the foothold of decon-struction within the resources of the text and the tradition.(Leitch 177)1

Deconstruction comes as a revolution against structuralist beliefs that theconcept of structure governs the meaning of the text. Deconstructionists, such asJacque Derrida, oppose structuralist thoughts as those presented in JonathanCuller's Structuralist Politics (1975) whose argument is somewhere based on NaomChomsky's argument that "linguistic structures are innately programmed in thehuman mind and operate both as a constraint upon language and as a means ofshared understanding." (Norris 2). The concept of preset programmes of linguistichuman communications is rejected by deconstructionists since it immobilizes "theplay of meaning in a text and reduces it to a manageable compass." (Norris 2).Deconstruction assumes the absence of any correspondence between a structure ofmeaning and any preset pattern in the mind.

Interpretations are multiple and meaning is infinitely differed. Relative tointerpretation and free play of words is catholic marriage between thought andsound. The thought and the sound which form the word cannot be separated likethe two sides of a sheet of paper:

Words for Saussure are not, of course, labels which havecome to be attached to things already comprehended

independently; they supply the conceptual frameworks forman's analysis of reality and also the linguistic frameworkfor his description of it. Saussure's model of a linguistic signis of a "two sided psychological entity" (Saussure 1983 p. 99),comprising the meaning of the word, or associated concept,together with (and inseparable from) its sound image. He uses

1 Whenever there is no pagination, this means it is a website.


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the analogy of two sides of a piece of paper to illustrate thebond.

A language might also be compared to a sheet of paper. Thoughtis one side of the sheet and sound the reverse side. Just as it isimpossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of the paperwithout at the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in alanguage to isolate sound from thought, or thought from sound....Linguistics, then operates along this margin, where sound andthought meet. The contact between them gives rise to a form, nota substance. (Saussure 1983 p. 157, italics in original)

(McNamara)

The Kantian theory of a knowledge-interpreted world, which shows concernnot in "the real" but in the regulating patterns which form human understanding, issimilar to the structuralist concept of a language-shaped world. Structuralismdepends on ideas such as relativity of thought and meaning and readerlycompetence based on governing presuppositions of the reading strategy. Therefore,structuralists like Culler, show double claim concerning literary competence:

On the one hand it presupposes an activity of reading groundedon certain deeply naturalized codes of understanding. On theother, it assumes that texts must offer at least sufficient hold- inthe way of contrastive or structural features- for such an activityto take its own intuitive bearings. (Norris 7)

However, new criticism, despite having a rational methodology, respectsthe autonomy of the poetic language of whose permanent features is the free playof meaning. Therefore, the new critical thinking keeps a distance between itsmethodology and the workings of the poetic language:

The distance was emphatically preserved by the rules of interpret-ive conduct which Wimsatt, philosopher-elect of the movement,raised to a high point of principle (see Wimsatt 1954). Chief amongthese was their attack on the 'heresy of paraphrase', the idea thatpoetic meaning could be translated into any kind of rational proseequivalent. The poem, in short, was a sacrosanct object whose auto-nomy demanded a proper respect for the difference between it andthe language that critics used to describe it. (Norris 8)

The deconstructive nature of the poetic language cannot be subject to the inherentdiscipline of philosophy. Norris quotes I. A. Richards supporting the same idea:

In his early writings Richards put forward an emotive theoryof poetic language, according to which poetry could be valuedfor its powers of evocative and life-enhancing metaphor, whileescaping the rigid truth-conditions of logical-positivist philosophy.


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(Norris 58)

Though professionally trained as a student of philosophy, Derrida's theoryof deconstruction challenges the philosophers' attempts at belittling the effects oflanguage on their theory of knowledge:

He argues that philosophers have been able to impose theirvarious systems of thought only by ignoring, or suppressing,the disruptive effects of language. His aim is always to drawout these effects by a critical reading which fastens on, andskillfully unpicks, the elements of metaphor and other figuraldevices at work in the texts of philosophy. Deconstruction inthis, its most rigorous form acts as a constant reminder of theways in which language deflects or complicates the philosoph-er's project. Above all, deconstruction works to undo the idea-according to Derrida, the ruling illusion of Western metaphysicsthat reason can somehow dispense with language and achieve aknowledge ideally unaffected by such mere linguistic foibles.(Norris 18-19)

Derrida sees that the written word comes before speech. His way of

deconstructing texts is to read and reread them in a certain way. He defied the ideathat meaning is grounded on metaphysical presence. (See: Carrigan). Derridamaintains that any given text does not have a fixed, invariable meaning. Rather, itis always open to interpretation. Derrida differs from Saussure in that he sees thatwriting is prior to speech as it is the precondition of language:

Derrida argues what at first must seem an extraordinarycase: that writing is in fact theprecondition of language andmust be conceived as prior to speech. This involves showing,to begin with, that the concept of writing cannot be reduced toits normal (i.e. graphic or inscriptional) sense. As Derrida de-ploys it, the term is closely related to that element of signifyingdifference which Saussure thought essential to the workingsof language. Writing, for Derrida, is the 'free play' or elementof undecidability within every system of communication. Itsoperations are precisely those which escape the self-conscious-

ness of speech and its deluded sense of the mastery of conceptover language. Writing is the endless displacement of meaningwhich both governs language and places it forever beyond thereach of a stable, self-authenticating knowledge. (Norris 28)

The plurality of interpretation resulted from Derrida's viewpoint thaton interpreting the text, it should be totally detached from its author. Thefact that a text may be read by innumerable readers endorses ongoing


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process of different interpretations. Moreover, a given text may be read andreread by the same reader; thus resulting in different interpretations:

In his structural analysis Derrida attempts to achieve a penetratinginterpretation of the text as a totally independent entity. Introducingthe term textuality, he challenges the opposition text/author byasserting the independence of the text. Such a reading, in effect,bestows on the reader the role of 'creator of meaning' which mightformally have been thought of as the function of the author.Meaning is considered to be detached from the author and hisintentions and instead dependent entirely upon the reader; it is thusno longer unique but multiple or even infinite.(McNamara)

The fundamental difference between Derrida and Hirsch lies on theirconcept of the function of language. Whereas Derrida sees that the author has noauthority over the text and the language itself within the text refers to nothingoutside, E. D. Hirsch sees that any text is author/interpreter-tied:

For Hirsch language is able to express the intentions of theauthor: it is intentional. For Derrida, however, languagesdefining characteristic is that it is iterable. Iterabilityrefers to the fact that language (especially that of a text)can be repeated (apart from the authors original intention)with difference. Practically this means that, because languageboth precedes and exceeds the authors intention (or that ofthe reader), there is no one context or intention that a text canbe anchored to. Iterability means, above all things, that atext will be repeated (and nearly every time) in a way differentfrom the author or other readers. This essential drift of atexts meaning resulting from the infinite number of perspectives

brought to the text by different interpreters and supported bythe continual deferral of sign and signifier makes it impossibleto locate meaning in any one place.(Appel)

According to de Man, interpretation of any text falls between truth and the

death of truth since the written text is nothing but a figure of an oral one, of areading experience. Therefore, the interpretation is a figure of a figure. The eternalinterpretation of the written text is eternally suspended while its rhetoric iscontinually repeated:

The dramatic states of "suspension" and "repetition" announcethe impossibility of reading the necessary unreadability of thetext. Reading uncovers and confronts a language that vacillates


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uncontrollably between the presentism of deferential meaningand the rhetorical subversion of that promise. (Leitch 184)

De Man goes on equating the literariness of a text with its ability of beingcontinually misread:

if it ruled out or refused all misreading whatsoever, a text wouldnot be literary. A text is literary to the degree that it permits andencourages misreading. Consequently, any criticism or interpret-ation that aims to achieve "controlled" or "correct" readings isseriously deluded. (Leitch 185)

Therefore, one finds that the nature of the history of criticism is as "a systematicnarrative of error". (Leitch 185)

Literary texts are self-deconstructive and critics and even authorsthemselves help develop this characteristic willy-nilly:

In essence, literary texts deconstruct themselves; they arealways already deconstructed whether the author (or critic)realizes it or not. Each author, to be sure, exhibits individualdegrees of understanding and awareness about the unsettlingrhetoricity of language. Nevertheless, an author is finally neverfree to hem in the randomness of grammar, the play of figures,and the aberrations of semantic references. (Leitch 187)

De Man's concept of language superiority over the author asserts texts being self-deconstructed. (See: 187)

Texts are unreadable in as much as they provide different misreadings. Theunreadibility of the text is further asserted by J. Hillis Miller:

For Miller all interpretation is misinterpretation. To read is toconnect elements and construct patterns out of the diffusematerials in a writing. As a reader works through the chain ofwords in a text, he or she imposes meaning in an act of willedmastery. Texts ( are unreadable-or undecidable-in that they allowa host of potential misreadings. To reduce a text to a correct orsingle homogeneous reading is to restrain the free play of itselements. (Leitch 190)

An interpreter and a text interact together to produce an interpretation which maybe strong or the otherwise. A critic is in an ongoing search of an unattainable solidground on which he can start his critical reading, a perpetual retrieval.


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Deconstruction has something in common with the act of dancing: bothdepend on difference-based repetition:

There can be no "true" explanation or meaning of the text-onlymore or less vital patterns of textual connections. Thus, thedance of deconstruction is structured, like all dance, as repetition,yet such repetition is ultimately liberated and hollowed out bydifference. The parallel here with contemporary dancing is remark-ably strong: after the waltz we have the swinger's solo; and at thedisco the music never stops, the dancers merely walk off whenthey've had enough. (Leitch 194)

Barthes draws up a strategy of deconstruction where he starts from thegeneral meaning till he reaches the limited meaning in the dictionary:

For him denotation is the last connotation. When the play ofmeanings closes, when connotation is regulated, denotationemerges. Most reading, in Barthes' view, works through connot-ation toward denotation. That is to say, reading seeks truth,objectivity, law. Whether in the name of denotation or connote-tion, this quest for the stable center provokes Barthes' derision.Yet, strategically speaking, the old concept of connotation allowsfor some plurality of meaning and, therefore, it promises sometactical returns for contemporary critical reading. Among otherthings, connotation possesses the power to relate meaning to otheranterior and exterior sites of meaning; it refuses to fix itselfanywhere (recourse to the dictionary is not sufficient); it disruptsunivocal communication; and it permits restricted dissemination.As a tool, then, connotation opens access to the limited "pluraltexts" (the classics) of our tradition. Admittedly, it is inadequate tothe modern limit-textsay Finnegan's Wakewhere licentiousdissemination creates a different order of reading. Using connot-ation, the plural of the classic text can be produced in reading.(Leitch 202)

When all is said and done, deconstructionists are not infallibly right all thetime. At one point deconstructors have been criticized of self-contradiction. Whilethey urge their readers to read their works with due attention, they deny the powerof the language to impart any message:

The deconstructors clearly expect that their texts will be readwith care and attention, their arguments weighed and their con-clusions discussed in a decently responsible manner. Yet howcan this be squared with their own professed skepticism towardsmeaning, logic, truth and the very possibility of communication?


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Their case might seem open to what the philosopher Jrgen Hab-ermas, in a slightly different context, has called the transcendentaltu quoque. That is, they demand that their texts be properly under-Stoodor at least intelligently readwhile ostensibly denyingthe power of language to encompass any such end. (Norris 124-5)

ii-The concept of the signifier/signified

According to the deconstructionists belief, there is a constant play ofmeaning within the sign and between signs:

The deconstructionist model, it seems to me, posits atleast two axes of slippage: one within the sign and one

between signs. For Saussure the two sided entity appearsfirmly bonded; although he does speak of the arbitrarinessof the sign making it both more variable and more invariableover time (diachronically). Indeed because the sign is arbitrarythere is both no reason to change it and no reason not to changeit. Hence for Saussure the sign is synchronically invariable,whereas for Derrida, owing tothe "indefinite referral of signifierto signified" (Derrida 1978 p. 25), the sign is in a constant stateof flux. Derrida then, with a magic pair of scissors, cuts alongthe margin of thought and sound in a way which Saussure thoughtimpossible. Meaning is asserted to be no longer possible in themoment, which Derrida regards to be as a result of the absence ofthe "transcendental signified": since this original signified or 'true'meaning is not present the chain of signification continues endlessly.(McNamara)

There is a never ending cyclical movement of the signified andsignifier process:

On the contrary, though, from the moment that one quest-ions the possibility of such a transcendental signified, andthat one recognises that every signified is also in the posi-tion of a signifier, the distinction between signified andsignifier becomes problematical at its root. (Derrida

1981 p. 43)

Derrida appropriates Saussure's terms signifier and signi-fied but extends the function of the signified to embracethe role of signifier in another act of signification. Thusthe signification process, if extended outward in this man-ner, would presumably eventually encompass "the world it-self [as] discourse" (Tompkins 1988). Clearly the "distinc-


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tion between signified and signifier" will, as Derrida fore-sees, become "problematical". (McNamara)

Between the same and the other, or the said and saying, lies the elusivenature of the concept of the signified/signifier which results in a constant play ofthe meaning:

According to Critchley, the metaphysical (Lvinas says onto-logical) Said would have to be reduced to what Lvinas callsthe ethical Saying. What has to be emphasised, accordingly, isthe performative act of uttering, which, however, can alwaysonly be momentary, because whenever I am saying somethingit will be a Said in the next instant. It is only when the Other issaying something without the Same having as yet located adefinite meaning (the Said in the Saying) that the Other is fullyperceived as such. And vice versa, of course: it is only in thatmoment when I am saying something to the other, when I directmy words and my attention towards the Others face that the other

is left in hers/hiss/itss state of wholeness:

The Saying is my exposure corporeal, sensible to the Other, myinability to refuse the Others approach. It is the performative stating,proposing, or expressive position of myself facing the Other. [] The

Saying is the sheer radicality of human speaking, of the event of beingin relation with an Other; it is the non-thematizable ethical residue oflanguage that escapes comprehension, interrupts philosophy, and is thevery enactment of the ethical movement from the Same to the Other.(Gerold Sedlmayr, Passau)

Derrida sees that the concept of the signifier/signified is based on the

necessary difference between the signifier and the signified:

Derrida maintains that language only points horizontally toother signs. Building on the work of Saussure, Derrida com-pletely accepts the idea that a sign (signifier) is arbitrarily co-nnected with what it signifies (importantly the signified is aconcept of some sort, not some external thing). Moreover, be-cause signs only point to other signs, a signifier obtains itsidentity only by differing with other signs. So the word dogmeans what it does because it is not a cat, car, box or wagon,not because it stands for anything in the external world. Lingu-istic systems are systems of signs and signifieds, arbitrarily cons-tructed on the principle of difference. (Appel)

iii-The concept of diffrance


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with those which are most common. To see one figure, eitheras a martini or a bikini, is at the same time not to see the other.Like Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit, we cannot hold in mind bothfigures at the same time, because their configurations dependon the same textual ground. Our experience of text will alwaysbe one moment a martini, a bikini the next, and Derrida wants toshow us that every interpretation, every insight into a text is atonce its exact blindness, to the other in itself, and to the veryconditions of its possibility. So if text for Derrida is the conditionof possibility for every interpretation, whether martini, bikini, orotherwise, then it must also be the condition of its impossibility.That is, his text must be neither a martini nor a bikini precisely tothe extent that it signifies beyond the limits of a meaningfulinterpretation as such. (Olson)

iv-Stevens Poetry: Reality, Imagination, and Deconstruction

Talking about poetry and Stevens, Critchley presses home a point typical todeconstructionist thought:

Poetry enables us to feel differently, to see differently.It leavens a leaden time. This is poetry's nobility, whichis also a violence, an imaginative violence from withinthat protects us from the violence from withoutviolenceagainst violence, then. (Critchley 10)

"Seeing differently" calls to mind the deconstructionist idea of misreadings.

Stevens's idea of a political reality enhances the claim that poetry has aninnate deconstructive quality:

Simply stated, his conviction is that a poeticized, imagin-atively transformed reality is both preferable to an inhum-an, contracted and oppressive sense of reality and gives atruer picture of the relations humans entertain with theworld. (Critchley 28)

Since such reality is seen and construed through imagination, it follows that it is afigure of the real and any interpretation is a figure of a figure.

Stevens's poem "The Man with the Blue Guitar" stresses the idea oflanguage displacement of the author, and of an interpretation's difference from aprevious one per se:

They said, 'You have a blue guitar,You do not play things as they are.'


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The man replied, 'Things as they areAre changed upon the blue guitar.'

And they said then, 'But play, you must,A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitarOf things exactly as they are.' (qtd in Crichley 38)

The constituent elements of deconstruction govern the above mentioned poem.Interpretation, misreading, signifier/signified, difference and differance showthemselves in the aural/visual image of playing a piece of music on the blue guitar.Basically, the composer who writes the musical note provides the player with afigure of the reality. The played piece is now a figure of a figure. Themisinterpretation of the reality is followed by a different one by the player. Theongoing movement of signification, seen in the composers idea of realityconstrued into a musical note which culminates into an aural piece played in theblue guitar, stresses the Derridan concept of differance.

Stevens poetry validates the deconstructionist idea that nothing is outsidethe text. Stevens's philosophy behind his poetry is stressing the touch imaginationexercises over reality:

Stevens is attempting to write poetry of reality,where imagination touches reality, transfiguringthe reality that it touchesPhilosophically expr-essed, Stevens allows us to recast the basic probl-em of epistemology in a way that lets that problembe cast away. (Critchley 61)

Stevens's poetry fluctuates between reality and imagination:

As J. Hillis Miller wisely points out, 'At times (Stevens)is unequivocally committed to bare reality. At other timeshe repudiates reality and sings the praises of imagination.Indeed, it is plausible to read Stevens's entire poetic produc-tion in terms of an oscillation between two poles and two

aesthetic temptations: on the other hand, the imaginationseizing hold of reality, and on the other, reality resisting theimagination. (Critchley 63)

Stevens modernist theory of imagination is explored in his first book Harmonium:

He seems to have been intent first on exploring the stylesand claims of his modernist theory of imaginationHe


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always had, however, a sense of humor and whimsy thatprompted him to back off from theoretical claims, and hewas always drawn to the simplicity and clarity he found inimpressionist still life, and oriental art and poetry. In Thirt-een Ways of Looking at a Blackbirdhe imitated imagistand Chinese forms. From the beginning Stevens also espous-ed absolute categoriesthat might seem to have been on acollision course with a theory of the endless proliferation ofrelative knowledge. (Bevis 63)

One prominent characteristic of Stevens poetry is its elusiveness since it ishard to give just one definite interpretation to any of his poems. His work isconstantly read differently, even if by the same reader. Each time the meaning isobscured, displaced, or a different signifier/signified relation takes place.Therefore, his work receives different interpretations:

Some critics consider Stevens a philosopher and attempt toposition his ideas into a coherent philosophical framework:others consider such an approach inappropriate because ofhis incoherent logic, inconsistent theoretical positions andgenerally incomprehensible ideasSuzanne Juhasz observesthat many critics (Frank Dogget, Ronald Sukenick, James Baird,etc.) attempt to shape Stevens ideas into coherent philosophicalsystems by offering symbolic, rather than metaphorical, readingsof his poetry. Dogget, for example, equates blue with imagination,green with reality; Sukenick explains Nanzio Nunzio as represent-ative of reality, Ozymandias as a fiction; Baird reads a captain andhis mate as symbolizing imaginings and artifice. Juhasz, who arguesfor a metaphorical reading, consider such symbolic interpretationsas particularly inappropriate and Stevens metaphorical languageas producing inconsistent theoretical positions. (Jennings 3)

Stevens poetry can be read through a deconstruction viewpoint that focusesin liminialty:

Stevens criticism, as we might expect, has often followed upthis interest in liminality. Critics with a penchant for post-structuralist theories have been eager to analyze Stevens's poetry

for its ability to elucidate or enact the difficult and shifting(so-called undecidable and aporetic) relationships betweeninside and outside, center and margin, world and self, signifierand signified, content and form. Deconstructionist critics in

particular who will often, characteristically, start by denouncingthe delimiting quality of the very labelhave been nothing if notconcerned with questions of limits and the instabilities of binarysystems of opposition. In the words of Rodolphe Gasch, one of


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the principal spokesmen for the movement, Derridean deconstruct-tion has shown a marked interest in how [t]he outside of the text isprecisely that which in the text makes self-reflection possible andat the same time limits it.... [F]ar from being an operation in thelimits of the text, deconstruction proceeds from and at the limit ofthe text. (Eeckhout 2)

Stevens' exercise of and on language can be best understood throughdeconstructionist thoughts:

Stevens' linguistic spells often foretell conceptions that areonly coming to be understood (largely owing to the decon-structive and rhetorical theories forwarded by scholars suchas burke, de Man, Derrida, Austin, Kristeva, and Foucault).(Cleghorn 117)

Cleghorn goes too far when he sees that Stevens preceded Derrida in their thoughtsconcerning language:

I suggest that Stevens pre-dated Derrida's historical questionin his poetic search of the motives for metaphor. All of thesewriters share an avant-garde belief in the power of language torevolutionize cultural thought. Stevens' theoretical poetry sug-gests that if a healthy culture is to survive, language has to in-corporate change and regeneration within its articulation.(Cleghorn 174-5)

III-Interpretations

i- A Dish of Peaches in Russia

The title of the poem reveals the fact that Stevens is fond of number three. Itis composed of three words: dish, peaches and Russia; moreover, the poemcan be deconstructed into at least three interpretations. The free play of meaning inthe phrase a dish of peaches exceeds the country borders and delimits space, timeand vision:

A Dish of Peaches in Russia examines a Russian quality

which peaches exude beyond that countryIndicatively, apeach may preserve a village, a metropolis may vanish whenno one sees it, and the sun rearranges a city: space revealsmore than just immobile faade. (Enck 29)

Stevens deftly entitled his poem A Dish of Peaches in Russia. By sodoing, the title suggests three interpretations. The first one is based on a vegetative


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image crystallized in an image of "a dish" of tasty "peaches" which the poet eats inRussia. The second is an image of sexual attraction since the word dish denotes asexually attractive person. The third is centered on the word peaches which refersto a group of excellent lovable persons whom we love as much as we do peaches.

i-a)First Interpretation

The first two lines represent the poets interaction with the peaches. Hishappiness is crystallized in the experience of tasting and smelling them:

With my body I taste these peaches,I touch them and smell them. Who speaks? (Stevens 206)

The attempt at intermingling with peaches, a symbol of nature, colours the imagewith Romantic pantheism which indicates modern mans dream of regaining aparadise lost. The image of incarnation, crystallized by the three senses of taste,touch and smell, is distorted by the recurrent question who speaks?

The following four lines constitute an extended simile where eating tastilyis referred to in Angevines absorption of Anjou. Then admiration of peaches islikened to an adult lovers who looks at his beloved, or a young boy who likes thesight of buds of spring; or the guitar players who is happy playing:

I absorb them as the AngevineAbsorbs Anjou. I see them as a lover seesAs a young lover sees the first buds of springAnd as the black Spaniard plays his guitar.(Stevens 206)

The simile in Angvine, a resident of Anjou which is a region and former provincein West France, in the Loire Valley, denies the peaches locative reference. Thematerial substance of the peaches, now a signifier, is metamorphosed into anotherkind of fruit, only if we consider the free play of meaning of Anjou, a firm-fleshedgreen-skinned variety of pear.

Then he goes on portraying an image of the peachs beauty, using suchdefinitive qualities as large, round, red, fuzzy, juicy, soft andcolorful:

The peaches are large and round,Ah! and red; and they have peach fuzz, ah!They are full of juice and the skin is soft.

They are full of the colors of my villageAnd of fair weather, summer, dew, peace. (Stevens 206)


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Time and again, the signifiers material substance is transformed into anolfactory/aural image of the poets village; again the locative reference is displaced.A striking conceit shows itself in the word colors since the peaches colorsremind him of his village, fair weather, summer, dew and peace. Theconceit serves as an excellent portrait of nature embodied in this simple image. Themixture of the signifier and signified embodied in the peaches makes the free playof meaning and plurality of interpretations possible and plausible.

The atmosphere of peacefulness is seen in the quiet, sunny room with openwindows. However, this complacency is disturbed by the drifting curtains whichwake the poet up from such hypnotic state in the presence of peaches:

The room is quiet where they are.The windows are open. The sunlight fillsThe curtains. Even the drifting of the curtains,Slight as it is, disturbs me. (Stevens 206)

Though located in a four-walled room, the signifier is still functioning as a meansof displacement. The peaches locative reference to the poets village creates aphantasmagoria where the poet is lost in a day dream, only disturbed by the driftingcurtains a locative reference to Russia.

The last two lines suggest another conceit: as the peaches beauty controlsthe poet who is spellbound, detached from the whole world, the disturbing driftingcurtains take him out of such a happy mood:

I did not knowThat such ferocities could tearOne self from another, as these peaches do. (Stevens 206)

The displacing power of the peaches beauty is likened to the ferocity of thedrifting curtains. The undecidability felt by the poet and created by the twodislocating factorsthe peaches and the drifting curtains makes the poemsubject to deconstruction.

A Dish of Peaches in Russia can read as an excruciating experience of adivided self that, most of the time, tries to identify with undecidable entities, adeconstructionist tincture:

the focus here is on the sensuous pleasure of ripe peaches . Here the observers will and his senses completely poss-esses the peaches-tasting, touching, and smelling. But the rudeWho speaks? in line 2 interjects a mild but mysterious disru-ption. (The question is repeated in 1.7.) The speaker makes itclear that it is he who speaks, but who is he? In tasting the pea-ches, he is like the Angevine who absorbs his own Anjou-as if


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perfectly assimilated to his own world. He is also like the blackSpaniard playing his guitar. But then he becomes the Russianexile... A self so divided, a speaker so ungrounded, finds hispleasure in his peaches and his fair weather, summer, dew, pe-ace upended The poem ends abruptly on the ferocities andviolence of one self torn from another. In the personal focus ofStevens himself that I am attaching to the poems speaker onecan only recognize a painfully divided self. He is one who longsfor the identity of the Angevine of Anjou or the black Spaniardof Spain, but instead is a Russian exile, one separated from hisnative land. In this poem, Stevens transferal of himself in hisprivate life from what we might call his native land and native lifeto an identity contained within his poems and the world that iscaptured there makes him a lovely foreigner, an exile. It disturbshim. Instead of finding peace and identity in his meditation of sum-mer, here he finds the opposite. The house is not quiet and theworld is not calm. (Lensing 307-8).

1-b) Second Interpretation

It relies on the figurative meaning of the word dish, and on femininebeauty highlighted by the suggestive qualities of the word peaches. The first twolines draw an image of a love affair using words such as body, taste, touchand smell. The intensity of the affair is underscored in an extended simile in thefollowing four lines, suggested in Angevines absorption of Anjousupposedly awoman with the nice qualities of a pear in the lovers look at his beloved, in theyoung boys love of buds of spring and in the harmony felt when the player playshis guitar. The poet gives a physical description of the womans beauty symbolizedin the peach which is large, round, red, fuzzy, juicy and soft. Thebeauty represented in colors suggested a conceit because it reminds him of hisvillage, which may synecdochically refer to beautiful women there. The quietsunny room with open windows highlights the beauty of the woman. The poetconcludes his poem with another conceit: The womans beauty and the driftingcurtains are similar in that they have a great influence over him. The former socontrols him that he is detached away from the whole world while the latterdisturbs this harmony.

1-c) Third Interpretation

This interpretation works at three removes of the real thing. The materialpresence of the peaches, as a kind of fruit, is literally denied; thus building up atotally different image from the other two. The first two lines contain a complexsimile. The excellent traits of the group of intellectuals, to which the wordpeaches refers, are likened to the material qualities of the fruit through a sensoryexperience of tasting, touching and smelling. The simile extends to the next fourlines. The Angevine-Anjou simile geographically shifts the referential meaning ofthe peaches and allows the free play of signs to go on indefinitely. Every country


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has strata of the elite who can be referred to using the qualities of peaches.Similarly, peaches can signify other fruits such as Anjou which, in turn plays therole of a signifier. The elite-peaches complex simile takes the form of the pleasurefelt by the lover who intermingles with nature, especially in spring, and by theSpaniard who enjoys playing the guitar. Following the sequence of signifiers andsignifieds created by the peaches is a breathtaking and tiring experience. Stevenslikes to provide his reader with a linguistic exercise, difficult in its perception, yetvery refreshing.

Again, geographical locative reference to the room in his Russian exilelimits the interpretation of the peaches to the poet and his Russian friendsaninterpretation the very title signifies. They are A Dish of Peaches in Russia. Inaddition to this, the poet may intend his friends at homesomething referred to inthe phrase my village and the synecdoche in colors. In this case the titleshould read a Dish of Peaches (remembered) in Russia. The poet enjoys thecompany of his Russian friends as well as his memories with his old friends athome. This company makes him forget his exile. However, the mere drifting of thecurtains reminds him that he is in exile even if with a dish of peaches in Russia.These disjointed visions combine together one imagea kind of a patchworkreflecting the excellent traits of those intellectuals who are as dear to us as lovelypeaches.

III-2 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

The very title suggests a deconstructive reading. Since the tool ofsignification is not stable, the signifier and the signified keep changing from onestanza to the other. Moreover, being of an unidentified nature, the blackbirdsuggests an endless series of signification where it plays both roles of thesignifier/signified. A symbolist reading of Thirteen Ways of Looking at aBlackbird can offer a kaleidoscopic vision through which hidden facets of the birdare discovered yielding different interpretations:

The multiple perspective of the cubist, the dance around theobject which causes Picasso to add an eye to his profiles, orthe shifting optics of Czanne, by virtue of which a saucerseems to bulge on either side of a bottle placed in front of itthese modes of vision stress the role of an imaginative eye

exploring the hidden facets of an object. This method can alsoserve in poetry as evidenced by Thirteen Ways of Looking ata Blackbird. (Benamou 9)

Thirteen Ways is a deconstructionist poem that mixes symbolism andimagism in a way that questions the totality of the poem:

Stevens' readers were especially accustomed to thepure


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poetry ofHarmonium, a volume in which French stylist-ics influenced readers to see a Symbolist legacy. TheFrench presences in the poems, their ornamentation, andStevens' reputation as a dandy projected an image of ahigh art that overpowered the subversions occurring in thepoems themselves. For instance, "Thirteen Ways of Look-ing at a Blackbird" is an Imagist poem that, through itsstructural flattening of imagined symbolic wholes, arguedagainst a totalizing, autonomous artform. (Cleghorn 59)

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is a good long imagist poem,

an arduous feat of poetic legerdemain (Enck 59-60):

This sort of composition never recognizes what it is about; theobjects never coalesce with the usually abstract subject. Thekaleidoscopic patterns steadily metamorphose the topic with-out commentaryStevens most famous example, probablyhis best known poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black-bird, with an exhilarating freedom of technique presents theviews not in excelsis but through what they derive from andchange within their habitat. The ranges through such varietiesof meaning and sound impart to the blackbird by its very ubiq-uity a transcendence; here as in the anecdotes the rhetoric maycontradict the subject. It partakes of the quality of a Ravel waltz:the medium cannot encompass the most ambitious levels of artist-ic intensity, but brilliant improvisation on hackneyed models imp-arts a nobility or sentiment. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black-birdmakes nearly ideal use of the material: from the short,expected The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.To the decorative bawds of euphonyWould cry out sharply.By excluding any outright statement, the images here create arich fusing with reality with response to it. (Enck 60)

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Blackbird" demonstrates the applicability

of deconstruction on Stevens's poetry. To this effect, Cleghorn shows that Stevens'swork has been subject to deconstructionist studies by different critics:

Critics such as J. Hillis Miller, Paul Bove, MichaelBeehler, and Melita Schaum have applied deconst-ruction to Stevens. Schaum's overview, WallaceStevens and the Critical Schools, includes a chapterentitled "Preferring Text to Gloss: From Decreationto Deconstruction in Stevens Criticism," which clearlyconceptualizes these theoretical developments. I utilize


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of meanings:II

I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds. (Stevens 74)

The three minds may refer to three conditions: being conscious, havingsomething in the subconscious and being unconscious. The simile which likens thespeakers mind, which is divided into three, to a tree with three blackbirdsillustrates the undecidable nature of the signifier-signified relationship. The threeblackbirds are ultimately bound to fly off the tree dismantling it of its core.Similarly, the three states of mind cannot present themselves simultaneously; thepresence of one necessitates the absence of the other two.

Stanza III shifts the readers eye to the natural scenery in the first stanza. It

intersects the readers thoughts and completes the portrait. The contradictory forcesthat govern the image make the relation between the signifier and signifiedundecidable.

IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime.(Stevens 75)

Whirl suggests the interaction between moving and still entities. Pantomimereflects the overpower exercised by the solemnity crystallized by the stillness ofnature. The first and third stanzas are characterized by movement. The second

stanza deconstructs the signification of the eye. The bird, along with its eye, refersto a quick-witted reader whose minds eye is subject to a streaming consciousnesswhere different states of mind may intersect together as fast as the blink of an eye.

Stanzas I to III show the poet at work exercising linguistic free play at will.The location created by language helps intensify the interconnectedness betweenthe foreground and the background, leaving every readers minds eye at a loss,unable to decide which refers to what: Do the twenty snowy mountains include theblackbirds eye or the vice versa? Is the tree, with its three blackbirds, part of thescene, or is it just a linguistic reference to whatever may be in the poets mindseye? And if it is part of the scene, is it in the foreground or the background? Is the

whole scene internal or external to the poets/readers minds eye? These questionsperceived by different readers, or may be by the same reader at differentmisreadings, result in different interpretations, each one of which offers a newattempt at deconstructing the poem according to the Derridean concepts ofdifference/ diffrance.

Stanza IV indicates complete interconnectedness between the symbol of theblackbird and different human characteristics:


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IVA man and a womanAre one.A man and a woman and a blackbirdAre one.(Stevens 75)

Part of nature now; the atonement of the blackbird and the human beings suggestsa Romantic pantheistic image coloured by a modernist sense of isolation felt by theinterpreter. The complex simile in the second stanza culminates into a kind ofincarnation in the fourth one; thus effacing any stable interpretation of theblackbird. In the meantime, it recalls to mind the Derridan concept ofdiffrancesince the blackbird is seen as an identical quality to a human beings rather than asa physical entity.

Stanza V presents an auditory image the reception of which is moreimportant than the sounds or the resounding echoes made by the blackbird itself:

V

I do not know which to prefer,The beauty of inflectionsOr the beauty of innuendoes,The blackbird whistlingOr just after.(Stevens 75)

The bird here is perceived as some kind of beautiful music which touches the deepreaches of the human soul creating a sense of harmony between the man and hissurroundings. That is why (A man and a woman and a blackbird/Are one.)However, this disjointedness, a characteristic of the stanza and the whole poem,

makes a deconstructionist reading plausible. In fact, the poem, and stanza V in particular, is a perfect example of disjointed abstractions that can accept theapplication of the theory of deconstruction. Cleghorn maintains that:

The poet explains in a letter that "Thirteen Ways of Lookingat a Blackbird" is "a collectionof sensations" (Letter 251)composing the multi-perspective poem, which neatly returnsto an unmoving blackbird at the end, suggesting that eachmaterially abstracted image was, after all, imaginary. Conf-usion arises from this poem because Stevens emphasizesmaterial language comprising its own reality, while highlight-

ing mental processes involved in creating language, and yet hedescribes the poem's basis in the sense. He writes "I do notknow which to prefer,/The beauty of inflections/ Or thebeauty of innuendos,/ The blackbird whistling/ Or justafter" (CP93). Perception ("inflections") and reflection("innuendo") entail sense, then thought. Stevens fabricates"a collectionof sensations" so that we think about themany ways in which thought is generated, particularly by


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poetic language that markedly differs from the original lostinflection of the whistling blackbird (of which there may havebeen none). (Cleghorn 7-8)

Inflections and innuendoes may signify the peripheral state of oneness withnaturean escapable modernist fact. Such a signification puzzles the reader: He iscaught between two fires, either to accept the short-lived happiness (the whistling)or the memory left (innuendoes). The fact that the stanza may be interpreted into atleast two totally different ways stresses the trait of disjointedness whichoverwhelms the whole poem.

Stanza VI shows the essentiality of the image and how it sometimesrepresents the thing itself. These contrasting images of movement/stillness andanimation/catatonia are part and parcel of the state of man in the modern world:

VIIcicles filled the long windowWith barbaric glass.The shadow of the blackbirdCrossed it, to and fro.The mood Traced in the shadowAn indecipherable cause.(Stevens 75)

The blackbird with its shadow which cuts through the still barbaric glass recallsthe earlier phrase of the only moving thing. The blackbirds shadow representsthe only animating force which hovers over that white nothingness which, at its

best, reflects death in life. Being catatonic, the mood is in disharmony with theshadow of animation. Time and again, snow intensifies the sense of isolation.Icicle and barbaric glass reminds the reader of the first stanza where snowymountains underscore a sense of overwhelming estrangement and isolation. Theimprobability of achieving oneness is further stressed by the word shadow. It isthe shadow not the blackbird itself which crosses, rather than steps into,isolation. However, indefatigable efforts are exerted as seen in to and fro. Theintersection between the mood and the shadow endorses a sense of impossibleincarnation between them, suggested by indecipherable cause.

In stanza IV the blackbird signifies some common characteristics between

women and men. However, stanza VII suggests the opposite. The blackbird has become a gender marker, a peculiar feminine trait imperceptible by men ofHaddam:

VIIO thin men of Haddam,Why do you imagine golden birds?Do you not see how the blackbirdWalks around the feet


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Of the women about you? (Stevens 75)

The bird functions as a signifier which refers to two contradictory things: theunattainable, referred to in fanciful image of golden birds, and the availablewhose shadow is there around us. The concepts of difference and diffrance showthemselves. These two different interpretations cannot be perceived simultan-eously, one must overshadow the other.

Stanza VIII completes the auditory image started in stanza V.

VIIII know noble accentsAnd lucid, inescapable rhythms;But I know, too,That the blackbird is involved

In what I know. (Stevens 75-6)The blackbird penetrates the speakers linguistic knowledge with its nobleaccents and lucid inescapable rhythms. The image of the blackbird illustratesthe concept of metalanguage and shows the free play of signs. The blackbird refersto a linguistic area that falls between noble accents and inescapable rhythms.

Stanza IX can receive a plurality of interpretations according to differentreaders perception of the circles marked by the blackbird.

IXWhen the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edgeOf one of many circles. (Stevens 76)

The blackbird changes into a common animating factor, a light when shed properlyon any stage on mans life or in any step during a processindicated in one ofmany circlesstrikes a chord in all of us. The word circles, an archetypalspatial symbol, evokes different interpretations. The circle illustrates both thesignifier and the signified, the eye and what it sees. Stevens circles are indefiniteand, of course, differently perceived. The linguistic location, the word circles,gives room to the free play of speculation by virtue of which the thirteen ways canverbally be constructed. However, the physical structure of the circle limits the line

of thought, whatever diverse it may be. This idea is further referred to in the wordedge which the blackbird cuts through, endorsing a linguistic limit of vision andthought. Seen from a different angle, the edge may be a structurally linguisticmarker which indicates the presence of other circles. Diverse as they may be, thesecircles constitute one unified whole.


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The idea of the light continues into stanza X; however, this time theblackbird does not signify light. Rather, it signifies the hidden potentialities which,when highlighted, the unexpected may take place:

XAt the sight of blackbirdsFlying in a green light,Even the bawds of euphonyWould cry out sharply. (Stevens 76)

The relation between sight and light underscores the necessary bond betweenthe signifier and the signified. The free play of meaning needs to be in sight andunder light. The linguistic interpretation of the blackbird shows itself again as it isopposed to euphony, to the noble accents and lucid inescapable rhythms.

Indescribable fear from getting into contact with the outside world, a fearconstrued in the form of a shadow of a blackbird, penetrates all kinds of defenceeven the verbal one, leaving the rider struck dumb. Even euphony and luciditydisappear and cannot resist such fear:

XIHe rode over ConnecticutIn a glass coach.Once, a fear pierced him,In that he mistook the shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds. (Stevens 76)

The impenetrable shell man isolates himself in is so fragile that it can be pierced byits own shadow which is mistaken for a blackbird. In fact the blackbird is a shadowof a shadow. The stanza provides a perfect example of misreading andmisinterpretation. The rider escapes reality and retreats into a glass coach and,with the passage of time; he takes/mistakes it for the real world. Thats why fearpenetrates him when he mistakes the shadow of the glassy coach, now a shadow ofthe real world, for a shadow of a blackbird.

Death-in-life shows itself in the eleventh stanza in Thirteen Ways ofLooking at a Blackbird. Self-isolation creates a sense of catatonia:

Faced with poems like The Emperor of Ice-cream,Cortge for Rosenbloom, Thirteen Ways of Look-ing at a Blackbird, or Sunday Morning itself, read-ers have often noticed that death infects the lovelyworld ofHarmonium that a consciousness of moralitykeeps that world alive. But death does not enterHarm-onium the way its shadow pierces the glass coach in the


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eleventh section of Thirteen Ways of Looking at aBlackbird. For Stevens, such an invasion occurs onlywhen we foolishly attempt to survive in something likea glass coachthe glassy essence of the mindwhoseequipage itself reminds us of what we attempt to avert.( Longenbach 68)

Stanza XII is in sharp contrast with the preceding one. Though theblackbird is a common factor of signification in both stanzas, the former is negativeand the latter is positive. The blackbird in stanza XII can be interpreted as a lifegiving force, an animation that flows in the world as fast as a river does:

XIIThe river is moving.The blackbird must be flying.

Time and again, the blackbird is a shadow of a shadow. The first shadow in stanzaXI is concretely perceived, while the second shadowinvisible everywhere exceptin the minds eye onlyis grasped through an aural image resulting from the soundof the fast flowing water. This time the blackbird refers to a sound-createdreflection in the readers mind.

With stanza XIII the coup is complete and the wheel has come to the full.The blackbird which starts flying among twenty snowy mountains, undergoingdifferent kinds of metamorphoses each stanza, returns once more to the snowyatmosphere and rests in the cedar-limbs:

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.It was snowingAnd it was going to snow.The blackbird satIn the cedar-limbs. (Stevens 76)

The time reference in the phrase evening all afternoon, whichencompasses the closing stanza with a gloomy atmosphere, is crucial to theinterpretation of the blackbird, the only unifying symbol of the thirteen stanzas.

The blackbird is the dark corner which lurks in the deep reaches of the human souland, when all futile attempts to cope with the world fail, creeps furtively to mansmind. Such an atmosphere causes disorder and justifies all (mis)interpretations.

The opening three stanzas, along with stanza thirteen, question the logicwhich governs the poem as a whole. To a similar effect, Cleghorn says:

These lines "embarrass their own ruling systems of logic"


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by contrasting statements and images in each sequence ofthe poem. "The only moving thing," the eye of the singularblackbird, is contrasted by "three blackbirds," and, next, awhirling blackbird. This poem denies that language can bedefinitive and that an image can be effectively representedin stasis. The poem especially deconstructs when, followingthe birds that whirl through the middle of the poem, the thirt-eenth sequence returns the blackbird to its singular static pos-ition that it had in stanza I. This return to the initial narrativeposition throws into question the haphazard events in between.The diverse images are out of whack, and they also appear tobe completely illusory because the first and final static imagesenclose the poem in an unsettling unity denying the variousplots in between. Besides teasing the reader's mind for the funof it, Stevens undermines the confident logics with which wesee, comprehend, write, and narrate. In the 13 stanzas, narrativerefuses linear progression, and therefore challenges the preval-ent view that stanzas are consequential. Unsettling these func-tions that produce knowledge is one of the few constants inStevens' poetry. (Cleghorn 5-6)

IV- Conclusion

The plurality of interpretations of Stevenss two poems A Dish of Peachesin Russia and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird shows the ingenuity ofStevenss presentation of words at play. The two titles are highly suggestive: Adish full of peaches gives a sense of variety which the researcher construes intothree interpretations. The controlling image in the second poem is of a highlycomplicated portrayal of the blackbird viewed through a multifaceted lens. Theblackbird is the animating force of potentiality that occupies the space betweenpotency and act, postulation of becoming and adoption of perspectivism, desire andconsummation. Stanzas I and XIII encompass diverse interpretations of onesymbol, (a) referential blackbird(s). The fact that a birds eye is anatomicallyincapable of moving, underscores its metaphorical importance. The variouscontexts created throughout "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" might be

considered from the romantic point of view as haphazard attempts at defining oridentifying the writing subject's relation to an object that is already ambiguous initself, and is a symbol rich in potential for producing hopes and fears.


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-Cleghorn, Angus J. Wallace Stevens Poetics: The Neglected Rhetoric. New

York: Palgrave, 2000.

-Critchley, Simon. Things Merely Are Philosophy in the poetry of Wallace

Stevens. London: Routledge, 2005.

- Eeckhout, Bart. Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing.

Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri Press, 2002.

-Enck, John. Wallace Stevens Images and Judgments. Preface by Harry T. Moore.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964.

- Gerold Sedlmayr, Passau. Breaking Through the Closure: Deconstruction and

the Ethical Reading of Literature. Online.12th

Feb., 2006. Availablewww.gradnet.de/papers/pomo02.papers/pomo2panels.htm

- Jennings, Jean B. Wallace Stevens: Hermetic Modernist. Ph.D. Dallas: TheUniversity of Texas, 1996.

-Leitch, Vincent. Deconstructive Criticism: an Advanced Introduction. NewYork: Columbia UP, 1981. (excerpted by Clifford Stetner) Online. 1st Jan, 2007.

Available http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/leitch.html

- Lensing, George S. Wallace Stevens and the Seasons. Baton Rouge: Louisiana

State University Press, 2001.

-Lewis, Ethan. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Imagism. Online. 13th Aug., 2006.Availablehttp://www.ua.es/personal/jalvarez/Word/Adiciones%20de%202005/lewis.rtf

- Longenbach, James. Wallace Stevens The Plain Sense of Things. New York,

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

- McNamara, Olwen. "Derrida, Saussure and Meaning." Online. 15th Jan., 2007.

Available http://www.partnership.mmu

ac.uk/cme/chreods/Issue_10/Olwen.html/

-Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice.(1991) (3rd edition)New York: Routledge, 2002.

- Olson, Rex. "Martini or Bikini? The Question ofDiffrance Between

Philosophy and Literature". Online. 14th July, 2006. Available
http://phoenixandturtle.net/bibliography.htm#leitchhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/bibliography.htm#leitchhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/index.htmhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/leitch.htmlhttp://www.ua.es/personal/jalvarez/Word/Adiciones%20de%202005/lewis.rtfhttp://www.ua.es/personal/jalvarez/Word/Adiciones%20de%202005/lewis.rtfhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/bibliography.htm#leitchhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/bibliography.htm#leitchhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/index.htmhttp://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/leitch.htmlhttp://www.ua.es/personal/jalvarez/Word/Adiciones%20de%202005/lewis.rtfhttp://www.ua.es/personal/jalvarez/Word/Adiciones%20de%202005/lewis.rtf


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http://www.janushead.org/JHFall98/rolsen.cfm

-Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poetry and Prose. USA: The Library of America,

1996.

-Swede, George. Haiku in English in North America. (From:Haiku Canada

Newsletter, vol. 10, no. 2, January 1997 and vol. 10, no. 3, March 1997.)

Online. 20th Jan. 2007. Available:

http://www.atreide.net/rendezvous/canangl.htm

- Vehkavaara, Tommi. "A Metaontology and the Metaphysics of DiffranceA Hermeneutical Interpretation of Diffrance and its relation tometaphysics." Online. 15th Nov,2006. Available http://mtl.uta.fi/%7Eattove/Meta_uus.htm
http://www.janushead.org/JHFall98/rolsen.cfmhttp://www.atreide.net/rendezvous/canangl.htmhttp://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/Meta_uus.htmhttp://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/Meta_uus.htmhttp://www.janushead.org/JHFall98/rolsen.cfmhttp://www.atreide.net/rendezvous/canangl.htmhttp://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/Meta_uus.htmhttp://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/Meta_uus.htm

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