"Invective Against Swans" is a poem by Wallace Stevens from his first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923).
It has been observed that Stevens has two modes. The first mode is a pureand orgiastic—Dionysian—celebration of life while the second is that of themalign and ironic observer. "Invective against Swans" can be classified as belongingto the latter.David Herd plausiblylocates the insult at an abstract level.
One of the tasksModernist poets set themselves, probably the chief task,was to resuscitate the all but clapped-out diction ofEnglish-language poetry. It was for this reason Wallace Stevens wrotehis "Invective Against Swans"....Stevens wanted people to understandthat the language of poetry (as it was passed down to him by hisVictorian predecessors), with its over-dependence on swans and clouds,was all but obsolete, capable only of expressing a certain poeticalmood—a mood of burdened over-sensitivity.http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1177980,00.htmlArguably then, the poem isinsulting not swans and clouds but rather both worn-out Victoriandiction and the philosophical/poetic impulse to escape nature, the latter through that decrepit vehicle of the soul which figures inPlatonic and Christian conceptions of immortality and a transcendentworld. There is no reason to think that Stevens was comfortable inany such vehicle. In 1902 the 22-year-old Stevens enters in hisjournal, "An old argument with me is that the true religious force inthe world is not the church but the world itself." In Adagia he writes,"After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takesits place as life's redemption."[1] See also "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman".
The poem may be saying that the poet should re-imagine the natural world,neither escaping to Plato's world of Forms or the Christian heaven, norrelying on Victorian imagination."Invective against Swans" perhaps "shows" how to do that re-imagining.Its allusionto Paphos, the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite—embodiment of thevalues of love, sex, and beauty—doesn't bespeak an attitude thatexults in slipping "the surly bonds of Earth." Instead it expressessummer's end in a pungently non-Victorian way.
"Invective Against Swans" was first published in Harmonium, prior to 1923 and is therefore in the public domain.[2]