Objectively Positive Poems by Wallace Stevens

Peaceful Spot or Lonely Spot?

Two of Wallace Stevens poems written in 1921 titled The Snow Man and Tea at the Palaz Hoon successfully project a positively inward and reservist mood that rejected the generally accepted negative post war attitude.

In The Snow Man, the positivity develops out of the singularly based perception that creates Stevens beautiful winter wonderland of a world. The secret lies within individual mental adaptation to environmental changes. Steven’s suggests that, “One must have a mind of winter, to regard the frost and the boughs.” In order to experience the beauty of winter one must direct their attention away from the harsh sentiments that describe the coldest time of the year and instead direct it toward the peacefully tranquil and cleansing landscape that creates winter’s simple beauty. Stevens goes on to write about the January sun, stressing its value to be much more than “any misery in the sound of the wind.” The poem concludes with the image of the listener in the snow who “beholds nothing that is not there and nothing that is.” This seems to represent the objective lens the listener digests his world through, allowing the information to enter the listener’s mind without any predestined connotation.

In Tea at the Palaz of Hoon Stevens stresses a similar perceptual ideology that focuses on individual conscious choice and feeling. This is a radical portrayal of a self-centered outlook in which the world starts and ends with the self. Amongst “The loneliest air, not less was [he] [himself].” Despite the rest of the world feeling lonesome the speaker is content to be himself and that is enough. The two contrasting ideas here are the feeling of being lonely versus the feeling of being an individual. The different feeling that manifests inside someone is caused by the positive or negative perception toward the state of being alone. “[He] was [himself] the compass of that sea. In other words the speaker is the master of his own destiny, whose life starts and ends with him. He enjoys this freedom and feels most true with this state of mind. This challenges the post war feeling of individuals feeling helpless and demoralized from the hardship of war, feelings exposed in Elliot’s and Pounds pieces from the same time.