tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4841866593898210279.post8652193919480898104..comments2023-10-31T03:54:17.210-05:00Comments on Thus Blogged Anderson: Cold-weather poetryAndersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02325205512110155291noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4841866593898210279.post-51961226558512799402009-12-09T14:46:43.780-06:002009-12-09T14:46:43.780-06:00My point was simply that the meaning of "must...My point was simply that the meaning of "must" in line one is undecidable on its face (though, of course, one can look elsewhere in Stevens' oeuvre for plausible glosses on the poem). It's like saying "you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor," and leaving your auditors unsure as to whether (a) it is impossible to put too much water in a nuclear reactor or (b) it is very dangerous to put too much water in a nuclear reactor. Here, either (a) you've got to be some kind of inhuman creature to regard the frost etc. and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind (that's your reading) or (b) one must discipline oneself, Zen-like, in order to have a mind of winter that does <i>not</i> succumb to the pathetic fallacy, and thereby sees nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.<br /><br />And then there is the question of whether Donald Rumsfeld attained that Zen consciousness in his poem, "The Unknown."<br /><br />Now that <i>that's</i> clear, how can we tell the dancer from the dance? And should we be versed in <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/155/8.hmtl" rel="nofollow">country things</a>?Michael Bérubéhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12875868040631597999noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4841866593898210279.post-74682008048938512322009-12-03T14:50:45.571-06:002009-12-03T14:50:45.571-06:00Berube came back & said his puzzlement was re:...Berube came back & said his puzzlement was re: whether it was supposed to be good to have a mind of winter or not. Rather than simply respond that Stevens (1) lived in Connecticut and (2) vacationed in Florida, I provided a brief version of the foregoing post.Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02325205512110155291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4841866593898210279.post-89554187821835216372009-12-03T14:46:03.290-06:002009-12-03T14:46:03.290-06:00Nice explication, and good to see "Plain Sens...Nice explication, and good to see "Plain Sense" trotted out, which I haven't sat down with in quite a while. I suspect that Berube's puzzlement has to do less with comprehending the poem as a whole that with semantically unraveling the last two lines. With three "nothing"s and a "not" between them, it's something of a linguistic hairpin turn for the reader. (Someone commented that this was frequently misread as "_the_ nothing that is not there", which alters the sense of the poem entirely.)Jimnoreply@blogger.com