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Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself

Wallace Stevens, Wallace Stevens poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry,  poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry,  poetry by Wallace Stevens
(1879 - 1955) Timeline

Original Language
English

Secular or Eclectic
20th Century

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 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.

 

 

 

Themes

  Snow
  Sound
  Sun
 
 


Recommended Books


The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens

 

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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.