Modern American Poetry

(^242) Eleanor Cook
unidentified but he is related, and somehow through the Order of the
Knights of the Rose. The Pastor Caballero (another c-plus-p name) follows
the Pastoral Nun to end the short poems of Transport to Summer.Christian
“pastoral” is not quite the same as a pastor that goes with a caballero (a
knight), whose poem opens thus:
The importance of a hat to a form becomes
More definite. The sweeping brim of the hat
Makes of the form Most Merciful Capitan,
If the observer says so: grandiloquent
Locution of a hand in a rhapsody.
Its line moves quickly with the genius
Of its improvisation until, at length,
It enfolds the head in a vital ambiance,
A vital, linear ambiance. The flare
In the sweeping brim becomes the origin
Of a human evocation, so disclosed
That, nameless, it creates an affectionate name,
Derived from adjectives of deepest mine.
“Mine” indeed, we murmur, thinking of Stevens’ affection for his Spanish
self. This poem sweeps (not strides) in enjambment, and makes “a human
evocation.” (It reminds, it calls forth.) The pastor is nameless, and which
word of “pastor caballero” is adjective, I do not know, yet the lines also create
“an affectionate name.” We speak of donning this or that hat, when we take
on certain jobs or roles. This is a Spanish hat, become a role through idiom
and through analogy.
The Spaniard is a compound figure whose clearest ancestor is Don
Quixote. His immediate relatives are Stevens’ mentor at Harvard, George
Santayana, and his contemporary, Picasso. Santayana is obvious but Picasso
may not be, especially if we recall Stevens’ phrase about the “dilapidations of
Picasso.” A notebook entry makes Picasso’s presence—or at least, the
presence of his Spanishness—in Stevens’ imagination clearer: “In a review of
Middle Spainby George Santayana, in The New StatesmanJune 26, 1948,
Raymond Mortimer joined him with Picasso as the two living Spaniards
most conspicuous for genius and said.. they have both chosen to be