Fly Fishing Forum banner

The Snow Man

2K views 4 replies 2 participants last post by  isoh 
#1 ·
<font size="4"><b>The Snow Man</b></font><!--4-->
<font size="4"><i>By Wallace Stevens</i><font size="4">


<font size="3">One 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 nothing that is.</font><!--3-->
 
See less See more
#2 ·
nothing is as nothing does


Stevens was a bank teller by day and is said to have composed most of his poems on the walk to work. I can just hear his footsteps in his work. I had never read this one before. Awesome. <I give it two snaps up...!> Thanks, Greg!!
 
#3 ·
Actually, he worked for an Insurance Company in Conn. for 39 years, where he rose to the level of VP & head of its Surety Claims Department (kind of sounds like Montey Python) before his death in 1955 at age 75. He also won a Pultizer in poetry.

Kind of an Intense Diddey though!
 
#4 ·
Yeah, I knew it was something stodgy. The point is he was a bean counter in all other aspects of his life. No one even suspected that he could crank out such "intense" stuff. This is him in 1948:


He died a few months after winning the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955.
 
#5 ·
<font size="4"><b>The River of Rivers in Connecticut</b></font><!--4-->


<font size="3">There is a great river this side of Stygia
Before one comes to the first black cataracts
And trees that lack the intelligence of trees.

In that river, far this side of Stygia,
The mere flowing of the water is a gayety,
Flashing and flashing in the sun. On its banks,

No shadow walks. The river is fateful,
Like the last one. But there is no ferryman.
He could not bend against its propelling force.

It is not to be seen beneath the appearances
That tell of it. The steeple at Farmington
Stands glistening and Haddam shines and sways.

It is the third commonness with light and air,
A curriculum, a vigor, a local abstraction . . .
Call it, one more, a river, an unnamed flowing,

Space-filled, reflecting the seasons, the folk-lore
Of each of the senses; call it, again and again,
The river that flows nowhere, like a sea.</font><!--3-->
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top