Of Modern Poetry
July 6, 2023Metaphors of a Magnifico
July 6, 2023Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow…
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-mache…
The sun was coming from the outside.
That scrawny cry–It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was an American modernist poet who explored complex philosophical and aesthetic questions through his poetry. His most famous works include "The Idea of Order at Key West" and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955, shortly before his death.