The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-- from Harmonium , 1923
Poet Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania (1879). He was one of the few great writers to work in corporate America. He was an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. He worked his way up to vice president. Almost nobody at the office knew that he was a poet, even after he became famous in the literary world. Stevens said, "I'm sure that most people here in Hartford know nothing about the poetry, and I'm equally sure that I don't want them to know because once they know, they don't seem to get over it. I mean that once they know, they never think of you as anything but a poet and, after all, one is inevitably much more complicated than that."
He woke up early, read for a few hours, and then composed his poems in his head while he walked to work. His wife didn't want him to publish anything, but he finally came out with a collection in 1923, Harmonium, which got almost no critical attention, though eventually it came to be seen as one of the most accomplished poetry debuts in literary history, including his famous poems, "Sunday Morning," and "Peter Quince at the Clavier," and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Stevens was so disappointed in the reception of his first book that he stopped writing poetry for almost a decade. But he eventually started up again and published many more books, including Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), The Auroras of Autumn (1947), and An Ordinary Evening in New Haven (1950).
Wallace Stevens said, "It is not every day that the world arranges itself in a poem."
*A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
*After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.
*Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace Stevens
*In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
*In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
****************
"The Man with the Blue Guitar" (excerpts)
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
II
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.
If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
III
Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,
To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,
To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,
To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,
To bang from it a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings�
IV
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-- from Harmonium , 1923
Poet Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania (1879). He was one of the few great writers to work in corporate America. He was an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. He worked his way up to vice president. Almost nobody at the office knew that he was a poet, even after he became famous in the literary world. Stevens said, "I'm sure that most people here in Hartford know nothing about the poetry, and I'm equally sure that I don't want them to know because once they know, they don't seem to get over it. I mean that once they know, they never think of you as anything but a poet and, after all, one is inevitably much more complicated than that."
He woke up early, read for a few hours, and then composed his poems in his head while he walked to work. His wife didn't want him to publish anything, but he finally came out with a collection in 1923, Harmonium, which got almost no critical attention, though eventually it came to be seen as one of the most accomplished poetry debuts in literary history, including his famous poems, "Sunday Morning," and "Peter Quince at the Clavier," and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Stevens was so disappointed in the reception of his first book that he stopped writing poetry for almost a decade. But he eventually started up again and published many more books, including Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), The Auroras of Autumn (1947), and An Ordinary Evening in New Haven (1950).
Wallace Stevens said, "It is not every day that the world arranges itself in a poem."
*A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
*After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.
*Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace Stevens
*In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
*In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
****************
"The Man with the Blue Guitar" (excerpts)
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
II
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.
If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
III
Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,
To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,
To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,
To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,
To bang from it a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings�
IV
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