proceeding before one’s eyes

Like his thoughts Stevens' poems exist in the present moment; one has a sense while reading him that creation is proceeding before one’s eyes. The whole is a continuous process, not a ‘talking about’ but a living thing, so that in a most extraordinary and exciting way one receives through the aesthetic sense an impression of pure potency.

—Geoffrey Moore, "Wallace Stevens: A Hero of Our Time," The Achievement of Wallace Stevens (J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1962), edited by Ashley Brown and Robert S. Haller.