{"id":251,"date":"2025-09-24T20:46:44","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T20:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=251"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:27:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:27:38","slug":"the-plain-sense-of-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"The Plain Sense of Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Plain Sense of Things\u201d also takes place in Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 It is late autumn, the leaves have fallen, and the park looks bare.\u00a0 The greenhouse is exposed in all its dilapidation.\u00a0 The water lilies on the pond are now just \u201cwaste.\u201d\u00a0 It seems to Stevens that this is how the world would look if one had no imagination.\u00a0 He wonders if the depression he feels, looking at this barren scene, means that his own imagination has failed.\u00a0 But no.\u00a0 He realizes that \u201cthe absence of the imagination had \/ Itself to be imagined.\u201d His perception of this scene, his feelings about it, and his description of it in this poem are themselves imaginative acts.\u00a0\u00a0 Our imaginations are always at work.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Plain Sense of Things<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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

After the leaves have fallen, we return
\nTo a plain sense of things. It is as if
\nWe had come to an end of the imagination,
\nInanimate in an inert savoir.<\/p>\n

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
\nFor this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
\nThe great structure has become a minor house.
\nNo turban walks across the lessened floors.<\/p>\n

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
\nThe chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
\nA fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
\nIn a repetitiousness of men and flies.<\/p>\n

Yet the absence of the imagination had
\nItself to be imagined. The great pond,
\nThe plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
\nMud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence<\/p>\n

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
\nThe great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
\nHad to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
\nRequired, as a necessity requires.<\/p>\n

\n

Glossary<\/strong><\/p>\n

savoir<\/em>: French for knowledge<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Plain Sense of Things\u201d from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS by Wallace Stevens, copyright \u00a9 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe Plain Sense of Things\u201d also takes place in Elizabeth Park.\u00a0 It is late autumn, the leaves have fallen, and the park looks bare.\u00a0 The greenhouse is exposed in all its dilapidation.\u00a0 The water lilies on the pond are now just \u201cwaste.\u201d\u00a0 It seems to Stevens that this is how the world would look if … Continue reading The Plain Sense of Things<\/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":[47,72,32,31],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wallace-stevens","tag-hartford-setting","tag-metaphysics","tag-poem","tag-poetry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","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=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}