Poem For the Weekend

Wallace Stephens' Man Carrying Thing

The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:

A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived

Of the obvious while, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,

Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,

Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that are suddenly real.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.

In Stephens vague way, he describes the most effective poetry (and I'm including song lyrics in this as well,) which consists of hints and issuniation, the painting of shadows on the wall of a cave. Painting the truth in too strong of a light diffuses its power, negating the universal power of the image.

The trick to me was always making the individual details work in the context of this vague universality. It's not easy to do.