[ephemeral]

I know, I know, who really likes poetry? Certainly, I hated poetry. Despite that lacking, I was interested enough to understand why not. I came up with many reasons - some good, many not so good. The most likely reason is because reading and understanding poetry challenged me; I found it difficult to understand the poem's meaning, leave alone the poet's intent. I was unwilling to put forth the effort poetry requires, so I kept my respectful distance.

And then one day, many years ago, while reading a poem for school (I was an English Lit major), I suddenly realized I was smiling. "What is this?!" I wondered. Please understand that reading all that fine old literature requires the proper mindset: steeled against all the "thee's" and "thou's," the archaisms of middle and old English, the caginess of old modes of behavior long since trashed, thus foreign to the modern mind. Sure I loved Chaucer and Shakespeare, et alii, but I would not seek that sort of reading material for my free time. So what was with this poem, why the huge smile? I glanced again at the title and author, shrugged, and then re-read the poem from its beginning, this time with all of me, in the moment. I not only smiled, I laughed! What magic, I thought. I became suddenly a voracious reader of poetry. My family meanwhile thought I had gone loony. At least I was in the correct place, school, to increase my enjoyment factor.

So the interest for poetry that occurs here, spearheaded by 2 or 3 key members of the Mobilism community, inspires me to... Well, to begin a series of posts called Poetry Appreciation 101. (I hope this use of bandwidth is okay, merry60.) A brief side note before I begin: Yes, many tips and tricks exist to read poems for enjoyment and understanding, all of which likely will reveal themselves as we go along. Meanwhile, Poem #1, followed by some thoughts...

The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens

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.

Wallace Stevens is remembered as an important American modernist poet (and one of my favorite poets), but he spent his days - when not scribbling poems in his notebooks - drafting legal contracts as an insurance company attorney.

In The Snow Man, he dramatizes human consciousness confronting the external world in language that is deceptively simple. There is nothing simple, however, about Stevens’ portrayal of human consciousness. His description of the world as "Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is" serves as a vivid emblem of what people see when they look outside themselves. The fragility of the external world and the complexity of human consciousness are overwhelming characteristics of the systems on which human life depends.

The poem moves from seeing ("regard the frost," "behold the junipers") to thought ("not to think/Of any misery") to hearing ("the sound of the wind," "the sound of a few leaves") and then to a conflation of seeing and hearing ("the listener, who listens in the snow,/And nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there…"). Using all of the tools of consciousness, man is "nothing himself" left beholding "Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."

Your comments welcomed re this poem, even this proposed series of posts.

I really liked the poem Made me go dl myself some Wallace Stevens ^^ Spirituality and poetry go really well together.

Please, continue the series You have at least one reader

And I like how you explain some features of the poem that I as an amateur did not notice. Continue with that, too ^^

[ephemeral]

I think you will like poem #2, Jaunting Head, which expectation I base on something you say (above). Oddly, I had selected the poem before your comments. (Which, btw, I will address in that post.)

Thank you for sharing your comments.

[ephemeral]

I forgot to include in my reply to your message, Jaunting Head, a favorite poem by Wallace Stevens... that also happens to be apropos for our little corner of the universe here. (Poem below.)

Do not hurry your reading of the poem, though; read slowly, to marks of punctuation (not line or stanza breaks!), take your time, breathe in its senses, and enjoy...

The house was quiet and the world was calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Phenomenal, no?

interesting...... I like calm poems like these, although I'm not really an avid reader of poetry. Some of them are so intense that it's almost painful..

I forgot to include in my reply to your message, Jaunting Head, a favorite poem by Wallace Stevens... that also happens to be apropos for our little corner of the universe here. (Poem below.)

Do not hurry your reading of the poem, though; read slowly, to marks of punctuation (not line or stanza breaks!), take your time, breathe in its senses, and enjoy...

The house was quiet and the world was calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Phenomenal, no?

Ooooh, phenomenal, yes! I haven't read many poems, but this one just became my favourite

The atmosphere he created is just too beautiful... and calm, of course I love the content, truth presented in beautiful form. Thank you, ephemeral Thank you very much.

[vang52]

The house was quiet and the world was calm because they ceased to be. The words on the page became the new realm of existence, reality itself, as the reader's thoughts merged with those of the writer. Thus it is, IMHO.

Excellent choice by the way!