{"id":248,"date":"2025-09-24T19:37:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T19:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=248"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:28:38","slug":"vacancy-in-the-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"Vacancy in the Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

During Stevens\u2019s 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.\u00a0 \u201cVacancy in the Park\u201d 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 (\u201cIt is like\u2026\u201d).\u00a0 How does each simile make you feel? The poem concludes, \u201cThe four winds blow through the rustic arbor, \/ Under its mattresses of vines.\u201d\u00a0 You can see that rustic arbor covered with vines in the center of the famous Rose Garden in Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 (This is the first municipal rose garden in the United States and the third largest rose garden in the country today.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Vacancy in the Park<\/strong><\/h2>\n

by Wallace Stevens<\/strong><\/p>\n

March . . . Someone has walked across the snow,
\nSomeone looking for he knows not what.<\/p>\n

It is like a boat that has pulled away
\nFrom a shore at night and disappeared.<\/p>\n

It is like a guitar left on a table
\nBy a woman, who has forgotten it.<\/p>\n

It is like the feeling of a man
\nCome back to see a certain house.<\/p>\n

The four winds blow through the rustic arbor,
\nUnder its mattresses of vines.<\/p>\n

\u201cVacancy in the Park\u201d from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS by Wallace Stevens, copyright 1952 by Wallace Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During Stevens\u2019s 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.\u00a0 \u201cVacancy in the Park\u201d is set in Elizabeth Park on a cold day in March. Stevens notices … Continue reading Vacancy in the Park<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[47,34,32,31],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wallace-stevens","tag-hartford-setting","tag-nature","tag-poem","tag-poetry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}