Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Great Regulars: "A Mind of Winter" looks solid, with its

firmly-packed six- or five-line stanzas, but it's mysteriously hard to pin down. At first, it seems to have a clear agenda. The title comes from the opening line of Wallace Stevens's almost Zen-like ars poetica, "The Snow Man" ("One must have a mind of winter/To regard the frost and the boughs/Of the pine-trees crusted with snow . . ."), and the epigraph is dedicatory: "For Wallace Stevens in March." Then things get difficult. The "he" of the poem is not necessarily Stevens.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: A Mind of Winter by Martha Kapos

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