Man Carrying Thing
Man Carrying Thing - context Summary
From the Auroras of Autumn
Published in 1950 in The Auroras of Autumn, the poem stages Wallace Stevens’s late concern with how imagination shapes perception. A solitary figure carrying an indeterminate "thing" dramatizes the tension between primary, obvious reality and secondary, unsettling appearances. The poem insists the mind must "resist the intelligence" and endure ambiguous thoughts through a long night until the bright, certain world is motionless in cold, emphasizing poetry's struggle with truth.
Read Complete AnalysesThe poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully. Illustration: A brune figure in winter evening resists Identity. The thing he carries resists The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then, As secondary (parts not quite perceived Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt, Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow Out of a storm we must endure all night, Out of a storm of secondary things), A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real. We must endure our thoughts all night, until The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.