The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man
July 6, 2023The Plot Against the Giant
July 6, 2023The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
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.