This poem describes a simple arrangement of pink and white carnations in a white bowl. Perhaps this image was based on an actual centerpiece that Stevens’s wife, Elsie, had placed on their dining room table. As the poet contemplates this centerpiece, his attention focuses on its striking simplicity. Continue reading The Poems of Our Climate
Tag Archives: Poetry
Domination of Black
Stevens said of this poem, “its sole purpose is to fill the mind with the images and sounds that it contains.” As you read this poem, try not to look for specific ideas or meaning. Instead, try to imagine these images and sounds fully, as if you are really experiencing them. How does the poem make you feel? Continue reading Domination of Black
The Plain Sense of Things
“The Plain Sense of Things” also takes place in Elizabeth Park. It is late autumn, the leaves have fallen, and the park looks bare. The greenhouse is exposed in all its dilapidation. The water lilies on the pond are now just “waste.” It seems to Stevens that this is how the world would look if one had no imagination. He wonders if the depression he feels, looking at this barren scene, means that his own imagination has failed. But no. He realizes that “the absence of the imagination had / Itself to be imagined.” His perception of this scene, his feelings about it, and his description of it in this poem are themselves imaginative acts. Our imaginations are always at work. Continue reading The Plain Sense of Things
Nuns Painting Water-Lilies
This poem was inspired by something Stevens saw in Elizabeth Park. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “Until quite lately a group of nuns came [to Elizabeth Park] each morning to paint water colors especially of the water lilies” (L 610). In this poem he imagines the nuns’ thoughts. As they paint, they ponder the miraculous beauty of life which seems to them “supernatural” in origin. This experience awakens in them a refreshing clarity of mind and spirit. They feel that this is a “special day” and that they themselves are an integral part of it. There were several French orders of nuns in the Hartford area, which explains all the French terms in the poem. Continue reading Nuns Painting Water-Lilies
Vacancy in the Park
During Stevens’s years in Hartford (1916-1955) he made sure he always lived near Elizabeth Park. His final home at 118 Westerly Terrace is only a short walk from the park. He walked in the park almost every day. “Vacancy in the Park” is set in Elizabeth Park on a cold day in March. Stevens notices the footprints of someone who has walked across the freshly fallen snow. To describe the way this makes him feel, he invents three similes (“It is like…”). How does each simile make you feel? The poem concludes, “The four winds blow through the rustic arbor, / Under its mattresses of vines.” You can see that rustic arbor covered with vines in the center of the famous Rose Garden in Elizabeth Park. (This is the first municipal rose garden in the United States and the third largest rose garden in the country today.) Continue reading Vacancy in the Park
The River of Rivers in Connecticut
The river of rivers in Connecticut is both the Connecticut River that flows through Hartford and the invisible river of life that flows endlessly through all living things. Haddam is a town on the Connecticut River. The town of Farmington is located on the Farmington River, a tributary of the Connecticut River. Continue reading The River of Rivers in Connecticut
Of Hartford in a Purple Light
This poem imagines that the sun, making its daily westward journey to Hartford, brings with it all the appealing aspects of Europe. The warm “purple” light of late afternoon in Hartford reminds Stevens of the romantic allure of Paris, with the legendary beauty of its women and its rich cultural atmosphere (for instance, the elaborate architecture and musical splendor of the Paris Opera House). He jokingly compares the sun to a French poodle, wet from its trip over the ocean, shaking off a shower of iridescent drops that transform Hartford (“the town, the river, the railroad”) into a sparkling paradise. Continue reading Of Hartford in a Purple Light
Tea
This poem contrasts the cold of a late autumn day in the Northeast with the warm, welcoming atmosphere of a comfortable living room overlooking a park. Stevens once referred to the poem as “A Tea,” suggesting that it describes a gathering where you enjoy drinking tea together. Note that the speaker addresses another person in line five (“Your”), giving the poem a personal tone. Where do you see tropical imagery in this poem? How does it make you feel? Continue reading Tea
The Snow Man
What do you think it means to have “a mind of winter” and “not to think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind, / In the sound of a few leaves”? What would the snow man be doing if he did think of “misery” in those things? The poem is all one sentence; why do you think Stevens did that? Why do you think he repeats “nothing” three times in the final stanza? Continue reading The Snow Man
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
Here the speaker is bored by all the monotonous “white nightgowns” in his neighborhood—nightgowns presumably worn by his fellow Hartford businessmen who all dress alike, without imagination. He longs for something fresh and unusual, to add interest to this routine life. Why do you think he uses the French word, “ceinture”? What is unusual about the combination of “baboons and periwinkles”? (Think of the sounds of those words.) How do you feel about the old, drunk sailor? Continue reading Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock