Analysis of a modern poem

Of Modern Poetry

BY WALLACE STEVENS

The poem of the mind in the act of finding   

What will suffice. It has not always had   

To find: the scene was set; it repeated what   

Was in the script.

Then the theatre was changed   

To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.   

It has to face the men of the time and to meet   

The women of the time. It has to think about war   

And it has to find what will suffice. It has   

To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage   

And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and

With meditation, speak words that in the ear,   

In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,

Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound   

Of which, an invisible audience listens,

Not to the play, but to itself, expressed

In an emotion as of two people, as of two   

Emotions becoming one. The actor is

A metaphysician in the dark, twanging

An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives   

Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly   

Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,   

Beyond which it has no will to rise.

It must

Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may

Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman   

Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

'The poem of the mind in the act of finding

( . . . )

To something else. Its past was a souvenir."

In the first section of the poem, the poet complains how poetry writing is a hideous one, especially to find the right word, the right scheme. He says, “The poem of the mind in the act of finding,/What will suffice” for it is not so easy to conjure the idea and the words sufficient in the mind  Comparing to the past he says this wasn’t the situation previously for they were writing to a set pattern. But now the situation has changed for modern poetry. Poets of the time, who the poet compares to an actor, repeated what was ‘in the script’ on the preset stage. It is not the same case for modern poets. They must sprightly compose their poems.

"It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.

( . . . )

Beyond which it has no will to rise."

The poet continues with his rules in the second section of ‘Of Modern Poetry’. He insists that the poem “. . . to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice”. In the lines following, he presents an extended simile, comparing modern poetry to “an insatiable actor,” who will be speaking into the “ear of the mind,” especially what it wants to hear. The actor is then described as a “metaphysician”, who sings in darkness, using poetry as an instrument with the power to make sense within the listener’s mind, for nothing descends or rises beyond the mind.                                                                                "It must

        ( . . . )

Combing. The poem of the act of the mind."

In the last three lines, beginning with a broken line, Stevens, iterates that modern poetry must allow people to find “satisfaction,” in everyday life. Particularly, in the simple acts “a man skating,” “a woman dancing,” “a woman combing” for anything could inspire to write a poem. Which, he reassures in the final line, stating the poem to be an “act of the mind.”