“Sunday Morning” in Negation

I really loved the second stanza of Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning.” It presents such a hopeful, Romantic outlook on the world, as opposed to the more pessimistic responses seen in poetry such as Eliot’s. That being said, I thought it would be interesting to turn this section of the poem on its head, and more or less go line by line and negate Steven’s celebrations of beauty and human emotion. The result is something much harsher and resolutely despairing. It is more along the lines of lament of both heaven and earth as opposed to Stevens’s challenge of traditional divinity and defense of earthly beauty. I found the process of negating the poem emphasized the merits of the original to me all the more. Going through the poem in detail and understanding each line in depth in order to find a suitable opposite highlighted the imagery and sentiments I initially found so compelling about the poem, in addition to allowing me to engage with the more melancholy themes often experienced in Modern poetry.

II
She shall give her bounty to the dead.
Divinity is composed of sinister shadows
and unawakened nightmares.
There is no comfort in the harshness of the sun,
decaying fruit and dull, muddied green wings.
The Earth has swallowed its beauty whole.
There is nothing cherished, not even heaven,
and Divinity has long faded into antiquity.
All that’s left is the melancholy of rain, the empty
silence of falling snow;
The consuming submission to loneliness and subdued
observance of a blooming forest;
Blankness on a rain-slick Autumn road.
What’s remembered is pain and too few pleasures,
The branches of golden Summer and heavy Winter
are long forgotten.
There are no measures destined for her soul.