EMAIL<\/a> | SYLLABUS<\/a> | POLICIES<\/a> | QUESTIONS<\/a> | PRESENTATIONS<\/a> | JOURNALS<\/a> | PAPER<\/a> | EXAM<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: see Journals page for details on keeping your journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assigned: Stevens, Wallace. \u201cThe Snow Man\u201d (Norton Vol. D 283-84); \u201cDisillusionment of Ten O\u2019Clock\u201d (Vol. D 285); \u201cSunday Morning\u201d (Vol. D 285-88); \u201cAnecdote of the Jar\u201d (Vol. D 288-89); \u201cPeter Quince at the Clavier\u201d (Vol. D 289-90); \u201cThirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird\u201d (Vol. D 291-92); \u201cThe Idea of Order at Key West\u201d (Vol. D 293-94); \u201cOf Modern Poetry\u201d (Vol. D 294); The Plain Sense of Things\u201d (Vol. D 295).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Snow Man\u201d (Norton Vol. D 283-84)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. In Stevens\u2019 \u201cThe Snow Man,\u201d how does this poem counter the Romantics\u2019 way of relating to and representing nature as an expressive vehicle for the human mind and spirit? What must happen, according to the speaker, for someone to write about winter accurately?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDisillusionment of Ten O\u2019Clock\u201d (Vol. D 285)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Stevens\u2019 \u201cDisillusionment of Ten O\u2019Clock\u201d takes for its subject going to bed at ten o\u2019clock at night: what will one wear, what dreams will come and what do they say about the dreamers? Sort out the groups of wearers\/dreamers evoked by the speaker — who would perhaps dream of \u201cbaboons and periwinkles,\u201d and who would be quite unlikely to do that? Finally, why does the drunken sailor\u2019s dream get pride of place; i.e. why is it mentioned last?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSunday Morning\u201d (Vol. D 285-88)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. In \u201cSunday Morning,\u201d Stevens\u2019 speaker contrasts traditional metaphysical abstractions with beautiful material realities and passions, but there\u2019s more to the poem than that. Critic J. Hillis Miller writes that \u201c\u2018Sunday Morning\u2019 is Stevens\u2019 most eloquent description of the moment when the gods dissolve. Bereft of the supernatural, man does not lie down paralyzed in despair\u201d (Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers<\/em> Harvard UP, 1966). What, then, does Stevens suggest humanity does in such a case — how do the lady and others referenced in the poem respond, and what at least partly underlies that response?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnecdote of the Jar\u201d (Vol. D 288-89)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. In Stevens\u2019 \u201cAnecdote of the Jar,\u201d what does the simple jar (a human artifact) that the speaker has placed on a hill in Tennessee do to the surrounding landscape? How do you interpret the thought that the jar \u201cdid not give of bird or bush, \/ Like nothing else in Tennessee\u201d? Why do you suppose that distinctness from bird or bush should matter to us, and what motive can you conjecture for the speaker\u2019s having placed the jar on a hill in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n