Quote of the Day

I'll never forget the first time I read Wallace Stephens' The Snow Man in Andrew Barnaby's Shakespeare classes at UVM. It didn't make any sense to me for a long time. However, the poem really opened up as I started to learn that reality is different depending on your perspective. If you don't understand something, you can't even begin to relate to it. (Stanisław Lem's brilliant novel Solaris is another excellent depiction of this conundrum.)

Context is everything. And, to quote DFW, never underestimate objects.

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 the nothing that is.
- The Snow Man, by Wallace Stephens