Analysis of Wallace Stevens’ “On Modern Poetry” Essay

There is something to be said for a man who can look deeply into his handicraft and define exactly what is that he does. The deaths of many men suck passed without a definition of their lives, or a true understanding of what they do. In his verse stage On Modern Poetry, W anyace Stevens attempts to define his lifes work and his passion. To a poet On Modern Poetry serves as both a directionfinder and a wonderful example of what makes poetics an amazing art. Stevens uses his talent to explain his talent, fetching the subscriber on a wonderful journey by means of the exploit of numbers creation, and through the human dit. The aforementioned guidelines that Wallace details in On Modern Poetry are dead on and may have shaped the way that metrical compositions are created to this day. He captured the true essence of poetics bit allowing the reader to continue doing their job, using their object and their imagination. Stevens weaves a visual path through the job description of a poetry and leaves the reader question what is said, and how to abridge it.Read more Good country people shmoop judgeThe journey of poem writing is a pose one, especially in the area of method. When Wallace Stevens opens On Modern Poetry with the line The poem of the mind in the act of finding/What will suffice (ll. 1-2). He is lucubrate the struggle to find the right word, the right scheme, or the right duration for change. He then follows with It has not perpetually had/To find the scene was cross out it repeated what/Was in the script (ll. 2-4). This is in reference to change and the ultra advancedist/imagist linear perspective of song in the past. This could be taken as a disparaging comment to the simplicity and complacency of past poesy. Regardless, I tend to take it as a comment on the overall state of poetry, a look at the past, that a welcoming of the state of menstruum poetry. The first stanza of the poem simply details the struggles of a changing genre, and uses descriptive diction to do that.One great thing about a poem is that it leaves room for thought, for personal development, and for individual interpretation. Not only does On Modern Poetry do those things, that it also tells the reader to do them. A metaphysician in the dark, twanging/An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives/Sounds passing through a sudden rightnesses, wholly/Containing the mind (ll. 20-23). The lines in themselves are perplexing and leave plenty of room for interpretation. But what a reader comes to resolve isthat Stevens is suggesting that a poem buries itself within the human mind and plants a seed. The poem acts as a seed to thought, and it exercises the mind on a symmetric basis. A good poem is one that makes the reader think, and not besides about the manner of speaking, but about themselves and about their mind.The idea of a poem as a performer, be it an actor in a play, or a musician playing an instrument, or a metaphysician playing an instrument is one of particular interest. Stevens uses the metaphor throughout the poem and does so instead well. The duality of the performer as the poet allows for a wide range of coincidence and gives way to a multitude of metaphors. In the following lines Stevens uses the idea of a actor on stage to present the depth of a poems wordsspeak words that in the ear,In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the earphoneOf which, and invisible audience listens,Not to the play, but to itself, expressedIn an sense as of two people, as of twoEmotions becoming one (ll. 13-19).The lines agree the idea that a poem must cross over from naturalism to a level that talks to the reader and allows them to listen to their thoughts and not in force(p) the poem. The poem becomes simply a vehicle for the human mind it opens doors and allows the reader to read about themselves.When Stevens enters the second stanza he begins to give his guidelines for mode rn poetryIt has to be living, to learn the actors line of the place.It has to face the men of the time and to suitableThe women of the time. It has to think about warAnd it has to find what will suffice (ll. 7-10).The lines in themselves are quite simple, in their original form. They provide simple rules, but rules that were fairly modern during this time. The idea of including the meeting of women provides a fairly modern concept in concern to womens rights and public recognition. Poems have always been concerned with war, or with human suffering, but the modern idea of sentiment of war provides an example of being both positive and tragic. The past ascorbic acid years had been fairly rose-colored, but beginning in the 1930s the States took a turn for the worse and thus provided a reason to require human tragedy. For a poem to be living and to learn the speech of the place simply means it must me modern, or current.The final iv lines are more intriguing and seem more complex than all of the previous lines. They seem to be putting into action the ideas of the poem so far. He gives examples of what things would work as modern poetry. Modern poetry must find satisfaction, and some ways in which that may be achieved is through the discussion of a man skating or of a woman dancing or combing her hair. These things must exercise the mind though. Modern poems cannot simply describe the action, but must look beyond the action, from the subject, to the writer, to the reader.While I cannot claim to fully understand Stevens view of modern poetry, I feel that through his poem I can form some conclusions about his beliefs. Wallace Stevens was not a highly re at a timened scholar, but he did have an understanding of what he was writing. He could describe his work, and he could put it on paper for others to see. As a student now finally gaining a respect for poetry it is nice to see what a poem writer thinks about his job. It is amazing to see that a poem can be made of any topic, and maybethat provides another point in the description of poetry. In a 28-line poem Wallace succeeds in providing a guidebook in the writing of good poetry, and gives the reader a heap to think about. But, as Wallace says himself, The poem of the act of the mind (l. 28).