Wallace Stevens Poems - Poem Analysis (original) (raw)

Wallace Stevens was a modernist American poet born in October 1879. For most of his career, he worked at an insurance company in Connecticut. He began writing in 1923 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955 for Collected Poems.

storming in blank walls, The seventh stanza presents what the speaker believes will be the thoughts of the wandering children of the future.

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill;

‘Anecdote of the Jar’ is a poem that expresses, through the story of “a jar” and “a hill,” the progressive overtaking of industry over nature.

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

‘Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock’ by Wallace Stevens describes a speaker’s disappointed with a population living predictably boring lives.

The houses are haunted

By white night-gowns.

None are green,

Or purple with green rings,

‘Of Mere Being’ by Wallace Stevens describes the world beyond one’s last thought and speaks to the elemental purity of existence.

The palm at the end of the mind,

Beyond the last thought, rises

In the bronze decor,

‘Of Modern Poetry’ by Stevens explores the essence of contemporary verse, emphasizing its need to reflect and engage with reality.

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had

To find: the scene was set; it repeated what

Was in the script.

‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’ by Wallace Stevens is a musical depiction of the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Book of Daniel. It describes the “feeling” of “music” and the nature of beauty.

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the selfsame sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

‘Sunday Morning’ by Wallace Stevens discusses the existence of an afterlife and the role God and nature play in the creation of paradise.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

In ‘Table Talk’, Stevens Wallace reflects on the subjective nature of life’s preferences and the acceptance of what one happens to like.

Granted, we die for good.

Life, then, is largely a thing

Of happens to like, not should.

‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’ by Wallace Stevens speaks on the universality of death and how one should endeavor to live a good life.

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

‘The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm’ by Wallace Stevens describes the relationship between peace and the search for truth within the written word.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Explore more poems from Wallace Stevens

‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ by Wallace Stevens describes the tension between an interior and exterior life and the role of artist.

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

‘The Plain Sense of Things’ by Wallace Stevens is a thoughtful poem about creativity. The speaker notes the “plain” times when one is forced to contend with a weakened imagination.

After the leaves have fallen, we return

To a plain sense of things. It is as if

We had come to an end of the imagination,

Inanimate in an inert savoir.

‘The Snow Man’ was first published in Poetry magazine in 1921. This poem features the poet’s perspectivism concerning an image of the wintry landscape.

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ by Wallace Stevens uses the blackbird as a way to describe the relations between humankind, nature, and emotions.

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.