Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OF MODERN POETRY, by WALLACE STEVENS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The poem of the mind in the act of finding Last Line: Combing. The poem of the act of the mind Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Mind, The | ||||||||
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. To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and With meditation, speak words that in the ear, In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound Of which, an invisible audience listens, Not to the play, but to itself, expressed In an emotion as of two people, as of two Emotions becoming one. The actor is A metaphysician in the dark, twanging An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, Beyond which it has no will to rise. Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman Combing. The poem of the act of the mind. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BRAIN - IS WIDER THAN THE SKY by EMILY DICKINSON THE BRAIN, WITHIN ITS GROOVE by EMILY DICKINSON NOTES TOWARD A SUPREME FICTION: CONCLUSION by WALLACE STEVENS THE MIND-READER by RICHARD WILBUR ONLY THE HEART IS HAUNTED by VERNE BRIGHT OLNEY HYMNS: 19. CONTENTMENT by WILLIAM COWPER BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH SYMPHONY by CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH THE MIND SPEAKS by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES THE MIND'S LIBERTY by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES |
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