The Snow Man
The Snow Man - context Summary
Published in Harmonium, 1921
Published in Wallace Stevens's 1921 collection Harmonium, "The Snow Man" exemplifies his early modernist meditation on perception. The poem frames winter as a state of mind: to see the landscape truly one must adopt a cool, detached stance that registers both absence and presence. It stages an aesthetic experiment about how the mind shapes reality, using spare imagery and tonal restraint to probe imagination, objectivity, and philosophical skepticism.
Read Complete AnalysesOne must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.