Analysis of Wallace Stevens’ “On Modern Poetry” Essay

there is something to be said for a man who mickle smelling deeply into his profession and arrange only what is that he does. The deaths of many men have passed without a definition of their lives, or a true understand of what they do. In his verse bounce On advanced metrical composition, Wallace Stevens attempts to define his lifes work and his passion. To a poet On Modern Poetry serves as both a pathfinder and a wonderful example of what makes poetics an awed art. Stevens uses his talent to explain his talent, taking the referee on a wonderful journey through the movement of numbers creation, and through the gentleman principal. The aforementioned guidelines that Wallace enlarge in On Modern Poetry argon dead on and may have determine the way that poesys are created to this day. He captured the true magnetic core of poetics while allowing the lecturer to continue doing their business line, using their mind and their imagination. Stevens weaves a visual path through the job de volumeion of a song and collapses the reader query what is said, and how to take it.Read more Good commonwealth people shmoopessayThe journey of poem written material is a perplexing one, especially in the compass of method. When Wallace Stevens opens On Modern Poetry with the line The poem of the mind in the bout of arresting/What go forth suffice (ll. 1-2). He is detailing the struggle to mystify the right word, the right scheme, or the right epoch for change. He then follows with It has not unendingly had/To convalesce the scene was set it repeated what/Was in the script (ll. 2-4). This is in reference to change and the red-brick-dayist/imagist view of verse line in the erstwhile(prenominal). This could be taken as a derogatory comment to the simplicity and complacency of past verse. Regardless, I tend to take it as a comment on the overall state of metrical composition, a look at the past, but a welcome of the state of current poetry. The f irst stanza of the poem plain details the struggles of a changing genre, and uses descriptive style to do that.One great thing closely a poem is that it leaves room for thought, for personal development, and for individualistic interpretation. Not only does On Modern Poetry do those things, but it also tells the reader to do them. A metaphysician in the dark, twanging/An instrument, twanging a wiry delineate that gives/Sounds passing through a sudden rightnesses, exclusively/Containing the mind (ll. 20-23). The lines in themselves are perplexing and leave plenty of room for interpretation. But what a reader comes to conclude isthat Stevens is suggesting that a poem buries itself within the human mind and plants a seed. The poem acts as a seed to thought, and it exercises the mind on a mending basis. A good poem is one that makes the reader think, and not just slightly the words, but nearly themselves and about their mind.The idea of a poem as a performer, be it an fake in a play, or a musician playing an instrument, or a metaphysician playing an instrument is one of bad-tempered interest. Stevens uses the metaphor throughout the poem and does so quite a well. The duality of the performer as the poet allows for a panoptic range of comparison and gives way to a batch of metaphors. In the following lines Stevens uses the idea of a actor on stage to present the depth of a poems wordsspeak words that in the ear,In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the soundOf which, and invisible hearing listens,Not to the play, but to itself, expressedIn an emotion as of two people, as of twoEmotions turn one (ll. 13-19).The lines represent the idea that a poem must cross over from reality to a level that talks to the reader and allows them to listen to their thoughts and not just the poem. The poem becomes simply a fomite for the human mind it opens doors and allows the reader to read about themselves.When Stevens ent ers the second stanza he begins to give his guidelines for modern poetryIt has to be living, to learn the obstetrical delivery of the place.It has to face the men of the time and to meetThe women of the time. It has to think about fightAnd it has to find what will suffice (ll. 7-10).The lines in themselves are quite unanalyzable, in their original form. They provide simple rules, but rules that were fairly modern during this time. The idea of including the shock of women provides a fairly modern concept in concern to womens rights and public recognition. Poems have always been concerned with war, or with human suffering, but the modern idea of thinking of war provides an example of cosmos both positive and tragic. The past hundred geezerhood had been fairly rose-colored, but beginning in the 1930s America took a turn for the worse and therefrom provided a reason to consider human tragedy. For a poem to be living and to learn the speech of the place simply means it must me mod ern, or current.The final four lines are more matter to and seem more complex than all of the previous(prenominal) lines. They seem to be localiseting into action the ideas of the poem so far. He gives examples of what things would work as modern poetry. Modern poetry must find satisfaction, and some ways in which that may be achieved is through the discussion of a man glide or of a woman dancing or combing her hair. These things must exercise the mind though. Modern poems cannot simply describe the action, but must look beyond the action, from the subject, to the source, to the reader.While I cannot claim to to the full understand Stevens view of modern poetry, I recover that through his poem I can form some conclusions about his beliefs. Wallace Stevens was not a passing renowned scholar, but he did have an discretion of what he was writing. He could describe his work, and he could put it on paper for others to see. As a schoolchild now finally gaining a respect for poet ry it is nice to see what a poem writer thinks about his job. It is amazing to see that a poem can be made of any topic, and by chancethat provides another point in the description of poetry. In a 28-line poem Wallace succeeds in providing a guidebook in the writing of good poetry, and gives the reader a lot to think about. But, as Wallace says himself, The poem of the act of the mind (l. 28).