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Without Something, There is No Nothing
(last modified on 2006-11-20 EST 23:55:49-0500)

Okay this page is going to be serious. So a pox on your house on you if you don't think it's serious. The following is a brief bio of Wallace Stevens, followed by the poem, “The Snow Man” from Harmonium (1921), and some commentary and analysis. Everything below is most certainly serious and factual. Very factual. (Under Construction)

I'm not going to cite the information for the biography of Wallace Stevens. Just trust me on it.

The man was terribly boring. Genius, but absolutely boring. He went to Harvard Hah-vuhd, graduated, and went to New York to be a journalist. He went to the New York Law School and graduated in 1903. Then, he met Elsie Kachel Moll like a year later, dated her for like five long years and then got shackled down. She turned out to be a real bitch.

They had one daughter, Holly, who was cool enough to compile all of writings of her daddy, while keeping the spirit of his works intact, very much unlike the actions of Nietzsche's fascist sister.

He bumped around the country a bit as an insurance lawyer. Then he landed his lifetime gig of V.P. of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Yep: one of the greatest American poets ever, and arguably the most genius in modernist work, never quit his day job: insurance lawyer.

Wait. Who the Hell is Wallace Stevens?

What, you've never heard of him? Don't be surprised. The main reason why (even though he's one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century) is because he's so unreachable; so esoteric. Why do many people know Robert Frost? Because he is so accessible. You can appreciate Frost poems on many levels. With Wallace Stevens, you have to crank your brains to get past a few lines. However, due to the density and brilliance of his writing, Stevens can squeeze more meaning into a single line than most poets can on an entire page.

So would Wallace Stevens be better than Robert Frost? Well, you can't really compare the two. Robert Frost wrote poetry for everyone, and his work was generally awesome; it sold well, and he was famous. Wallace Stevens wrote poems of a very intellectual, esoteric slant, and he never got famous. Did it matter? Of course it did. See below for the story of Steven's rabid jealousy of the success of one of his contemporaries, T.S. Eliot.

Just before you accuse me of being full of biases (which I am), my favorite poet has always been E. E. Cummings, because I'm a sap for love poems. I know a bunch of Cummings poems by heart.

Wallace Stevens collected some poems together; published Harmonium in 1923. His best work is The Auroras of Autumn (1950), which he did not release until he was over 70 years old. In addition to being a super boring guy, his genius didn't happen until he was old. Like a reverse-Mozart.

You want analysis? I'll give you commentary.

One must have a mind of winter. Some considerations for my crazy, toothless, chain-smoking, freak job high school English teacher, Mr. Arnold. The course syllabus had a bunch of American poets, much easier to study than Wallace Stevens; Mr. Arnold chose Wallace Stevens, in order to spite us all. Arnold was better than every single Columbia professor I've ever had.

The Snow Man

Harmonium (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [September 7], 1923): 24. York University Library Special Collections 734

Before we even say anything, what was your first thought? 'Uhh, I think what I read was pretty and all, but I don't get it... What's it supposed to mean?"

“Maybe there's nothing to get. ”

“Typical of the American modernist poetic movement, we are witnessing a new paradigm of juxtapositioning dichotomies. ”

“It's poetry. It means different things for different people. For me, this poem reminded me of back when I was a kid and I would wait for the first snowfall to make my own snowman... ”

Oh dear Jesus Christ Almighty, our Lord in Heaven - if your English teacher every said anything remotely like the above three comments at any given time during class, then I have THIS much pity for your pitiful souls. Damn your hippie teachers and their cheap pretenses not to teach.

The Commentary and Analysis

Some grad student TA once told me of this art critic that got pissed off at people who tried to critique paintings within the context of the paintings' movement. Specifically, he was calling Greenberg on remarking a certain Picasso painting in the context of Cubism. 'Well shit,' said he, 'why don't you look at Picasso paintings for Picasso's paintings?' That is, while Picasso was painting his paintings, he wasn't thinking to himself, 'gee, now I'm going to start the Cubist movement.' He was just painting.

So let us look at this Wallace Stevens poem and make commentary not within the context of modernist American poetry, but just in the context of the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

Wallace Stevens is first and foremost, meticulous. He is not careless. He does not mess around. Every little piece of syntax, every word said or every word not said, is purposeful. Secondly Wallace Stevens used poetry to criticize poetry, or better yet, he used the English language as a critique of itself (funny because Clement Greenberg was the one that proposed that modern art should be about its own medium - see Vir Heroicus Sublimis by Barnett Newman

He loved to play semantics. He loved to point out the fatal flaw and paradox of language - we use words to define things, but in defining things, we are giving such things boundaries and limits. Then, we do something even worse: we give words connotations.

“The Snow Man” is about semantics and connotations. As with any Wallace Stevens poem. you should begin at the title:

“ The Snow Man ”

It's not 'The Snowman;' it's 'The Snow Man.' As in, 'The Man of Snow.' For a snowman is a man made of snow - see the above picture for a visual description. This claim ties in nicely with line #1:

One must have a mind of winter

So Wallace Stevens is asking us to be a person of winter, not just a person in winter. From the first line to the end, notice the imagery: notice that even though the images may or should be pleasant and pretty, the descriptions suggest otherwise. Do we start with the connotations? A mind of winter - something cold, desolate and barren? Perhaps a little of the Transcendental Via Negativa?

Then there's the word 'must.' Why not 'should' or 'can?' Because in mathematical, technical logic, 'must' translates into a bi-conditional 'if and only if' statement. Hence or otherwise, you must have a mind of winter, in order to do the rest of the poem; the rest of the poem cannot be done unless you have a mind of winter.

Oh but if we're going to get technical, then why personify winter? Winter does not have a mind. Winter is winter. More on that later.

I just made commentary on one line of a Wallace Stevens poem. Just one line so far. Sometimes, you have to analyze individual words, one at a time. This approach is the only way you can understand Wallace Stevens.

Next two lines, shall we?

To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

How and which words Wallace Stevens chooses is crucial. He does not make accidents. He does not go by convenience. The words I'm talking about are 'regard' and 'crusted.'

If you're going to think about winter and the imagery of winter, why not 'ponder' or 'daydream?' Nope. 'regard' is a very simple, technical word. By definition, we have synonyms like, 'to take into account,' 'to observe,' and 'to consider.' Like I said: very technical. No connotations of wispy dream sequences or abstractions.

Stevens has established for us the point of this poem in the first two lines; the rest is some very awesome elaboration. The summary: 'you have to be of winter to consider winter.' Hence or otherwise, the best way to observe something is to be of the context of your observations, kind of like a first-person native informant.

When you think of snow on pine trees, do you think, 'crusted?' Why, of all words to describe snow on a tree, does Wallace Stevens choose this one? Remember this a poem of semantics and connotations. The point having a question begged is the point. If you're questioning the usage of the word, 'crusted,' then you must surely do not have a mind of winter. You're making abstractions. You're thinking of the connotations of what it means to be crusty, like a crusty sheet of used toilet paper. You are failing. You are not regarding winter, you are comparing and contrasting winter to your worldly experiences.

So for every other word in this poem, Wallace Stevens is challenging you to take the word for what it is, and not for what it reminds you of. Stop with the connotations.

And so ends stanza #1. Wallace Stevens has said so much in a simple title and three lines (each with eight syllables, for a grand total of 24). In order to understand winter, you must be of winter and of nothing else. Leave your a priori bullshit for a T.S. Eliot poem.

Actually, Wallace Stevens hated T.S. Eliot, mostly because Wallace Stevens was such a strict, intense poet and Tommy Boy was anything but. There was also the issue of “The Wasteland,” which was published at around the same time as Harmonium. As the poetry world got torn a new asshole of modernism, sales of Harmonium sold like insurance policies.

All the proof you'll ever need is in the following poem. It's all there. Maybe I'll make commentary for this poem some other time. Oh and trust me. T.S. got the message. Even if you don't get the poem the first thirty times around, you can still appreciate the way the poem rolls off your tongue.

Bantams in Pine-Woods

Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens; Wallace Stevens. 1954

Oh, and just to help you along, the word, 'Fat!' does not mean fat like a black man's wheels, or fat like Howard Taft. Fat, in archaic English, also meant 'idiot.' I knew to look for olde Englyshe definitions because I am pulling a Leo Steinberg: Use Stevens to prove Stevens - Wally loved to play with the English language. If you want to understand one of his poems, make sure you have a real nice dictionary handy. Look up every single word. Seriously. Every.

This poem starts out with a bunch of foreign-sounding words. Think about how “The Wasteland” starts.

And 'Appalachian tangs' is a fancy way of saying, “Dear Thomas Sterns: You may have made like a Madonna and moved to England to be with all your pseudo-intellectual British Cockney bullshitters, but we can still hear slight suggestions of a redneck American accent in your adopted dialect. You poseur.”

This is Going to Take Awhile, Isn't It?

Damn straight. But by the time I'm done, This page will be the most comprehensive commentary and analysis on the internet for “The Snow Man.” Because I'll be damned if the only online shit that I can find on this poem are revisionist, pseudo-intellectual rants about American poetry instead of actually focusing on the poem itself.

Onto the next stanza:

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Notice that it flows like the first stanza, an if-then statement of the first line being the conditional and next two, the result. The literal translation is the easy part - you must be standing around in the winter a long time to get cold. Then, you can understand a bunch of trees and weather phenomena.

But what a conditional! The hell why would I want to be cold a long time? What a strange requisite. But we know that Stevens does not want us to draw connotations here, despite how my mind is racing towards a combination of asceticism and the Transcendental Via Negativa of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In case you're wondering, Ms. Dillard is pulling a Walden - she moves to this little swamp in Virginia and stares at furry creatures. For a fucking long-ass time. The trick is that, she becomes something of the swamp: she knows it so well; she almost forgets civilization. After removing everything that is not God, what she discovers is God. You could say that Stevens is telling us to shiver and clatter our teeth, in order to understand winter.

I think it might something along those lines. If you want to be a part of winter, you have to be there, with all the sensations of winter. I am talking about physical sensations - just the cold. Not the natural abstraction of 'cold, desolate, barren.' Just cold.

The next two lines feature contrasting thoughts. Line 6 contains both the words 'behold' and 'shagged;' line 7 has 'rough' and 'glitter.' One word suggests pretty things; the other, not so pretty. Was Wallace Stevens botching his thesaurus entries? Hardly. Again, he is playing semantics with us. He wants us to understand the English language.

For example, when I think 'behold,' I think of the line, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' which makes the word somehow related to aesthetics. Nope. The actual dictionary definition is nothing more than 1) to perceive by visual and/or mental faculty; 2) to look upon. Nothing about beauty or aesthetics.

Next is in question is the word 'rough,' which in this case, Wallace Stevens is using as an adjective. 'Rough' is not nearly that kind of surface that scrapes your knees, or some dirty biker with bad defensive mechanisms. 'Rough' can also mean something that is in its natural state.

Now for the similarities. Both junipers and spruces are evergreens; their significance is significant especially in the wintertime. Everything dies or has the look of death in the winter except for evergreens.

Remember what I said: not only should we consider what Wallace Stevens says in “The Snow Man”, but what he chooses not to say as well. Of all the evergreens, why 'juniper' and 'spruce?'

Junipers flavor my gin. I love gin.

Junipers are known for juniper berries. Their trunks form into really twisty gnarled, but pretty things. They smell nice. Spruces are what you think of, when you think of pine trees. Junipers are not. 'To spruce one's self up' means to clean yourself up to look nice and trim.

So Wallace Stevens chose two evergreens to represent some plants in nature that look 'rough' in winter. He chose two opposite-looking trees, in order to spread the range of imagery - a twisted, gnarled thing versus a spruced-up spruce.

Having 'rough' and 'glitter' in the same line may connote 'rough cut diamonds.' Wrong. These are trees. They are not diamonds.

Two down, three to go.

Going #3. And #4.

For the sake of analysis, the next two stanzas actually go together better than separately. They happen to be the two easiest.

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

Okay now things are starting to make sense. My argument about semantics and connotations is no longer implied, but expressed within the poem. Wallace Stevens wants “The Snow Man” is in winter by giving us seasonal timing. And what an intense one - the January sun after a snowfall. The glare off snow at the height of winter is painful, glaring. Like looking at God - we as mortals cannot comprehend God. The glare in wintertime is so glaring that we cannot comprehend winter itself.

So instead, we think of “misery in the sound of the wind,” which we are told not to do. Why not? Well, because making an abstraction to misery is making connotations. The wind is not miserable. Wintertime is not miserable. Wind is just wind. If we are to understand winter, we must remove all a priori assumptions. That's not misery we're hearing. We're just hearing “the sound of a few leaves.” That's it.

Now there is just a list. The wind that we should not equate with misery is also the same wind that blows over the wintry land. Even if the land is bare, it's not miserable. It's just freaking winter.

Of all the stanzas, I think these two flow the best when spoken. The stanzas almost sound like wind. Why? Note that the only 's' sounds in each line is somewhere near the middle, and these s-sounds are repeated. (The 's' in 'misery' and 'is' are z-sounding sounds.) The 's' drags out each line, like the dragging of wind. That's some good stylistic meandering.

Almost done?

Yeah right. The last one is almost always the hardest one. This last stanza is all about semantics. We're going to have to pick it apart, one word at a time. It's wordy, it's too repetitive (initially), it's confusing, it's esoteric....

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

After all the talk of all sorts of esoteric stuff, the poem has to have a point. So far, we've been told that we have to follow a bunch of conditions, in order to be an observer of winter; that a priori knowledge won't do jack for us. Questions remain. Why bother telling all of us this stuff? Why set the poem in winter? (Would it have worked for any other season, or occasion, for that matter?) Why free verse, but structured as five stanzas of three lines? Why bother? But mostly, why so esoteric?

Fortunately, the last stanza concludes all arguments. Christ, this stanza is difficult.

The first line, with its use of repetition, is an echo back to the initial bi-conditional statement. If you want to comprehend winter, you have to listen (the 'if') and listen in winter (the 'only if'). So far, we've been given visual instructions, but now we're told to listen too. After all the definition of 'behold' includes all senses, not just vision.

Which makes sense. If you want to understand winter, you have to catch all of it with your senses. No a priori bullshit Wallace Stevens. More importantly, just listen to the wind. It's the wind that blows through some leaves and over some snow. The wind is not miserable. It's just wind. The misery that you think you're perceiving is just in your head.

Notice the long list of contradictions that follows. Oh, semantics! Wallace Stevens is going to use the word, 'nothing' three times, in three different ways, with three different meanings. First as an adjective, then as pronoun, and third as a noun.

Hey, that's right, didn't I define the word, 'nothing' as an adjective, pronoun, and a noun, on the previous page? I sure did. How convenient.

The first use of 'nothing' is easy - it's the basis for most of the poem. By saying “nothing himself” Stevens is referring to having a mind of winter, cold a long time, and a listener who does not hear any misery in the wind. A person with no baggage, no a priori knowledge. Of course, there's the inherent contradiction of a person being nothing, or is there? To say 'nothing himself' goes a bit further than rejecting Kant. To say this, Stevens is asking us to reject individuality, to the extent of having individuality interfere with observation. That's pretty hard to do, almost impossible.

At the MoMA, there's an exhibit of a chair. There's the actual chair, a picture of that chair, and an enlarged definition of 'chair,' with things like, “something you sit in,” followed by “position of authority,” and “a title.” I'm thinking, there's a fucking chair in this museum, a museum equated with Van Gogh and Picasso and Cezanné, so...what's the point? A kid walks by and (not realizing the depth his statement) says, “it's just a freaking chair!” Get it? Now I like that chair.

The listener is supposed to 'behold' the winter. Remember, despite all its connotations, the word 'behold' just means 'to observe.'

The second 'nothing,' is part of “Nothing that is there.” But... how can nothing be there, here, or anywhere? Shouldn't it say, “Nothing that is not there?” Because Steven's phrase and mine mean two different thing. Let's look at the word, 'nothing' as a pronoun.

Check back in one week (under construction).

Written/ Compiled by Dinah Cheshire and Wallace Stevens
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