2016年10月2日 星期日

"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS was first published by Alfred A. Knopf on this day in 1954 on the occasion of the poet's 75th birthday. The booked earned Stevens the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955, shortly before his death.
"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
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The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens is the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet.” Originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens’s seventy-fifth birthday, the book was rushed into print for the occasion and contained scores of errors. These have now been corrected in one place for the first time by Stevens scholars John N. Serio and Christopher Beyers, based on original editions and manuscripts. The Collected Poems is the one volume that Stevens intended to contain all the poems he wished to preserve, presented in the way he wanted. An essential collection for all readers of poetry, it is an enduring monument to his dazzling achievement.

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