The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.
As he did in "Anecdote of the Jar," (Banjo52, Nov. 12, 2009) Wallace Stevens values the human imagination in “The Snow Man," although his approach here is to expose those without imagination as imperceptive people made of snow. The poem is something of a wonder in syntax, but I think those who go slowly through it a couple of times, appreciating the gems along the way, should be all right.
I find that the core of the poem is “a mind of winter.” Is that a good thing? Does that mean one has the imaginative power to be one with the scene and the season, something like Keats’ Negative Capability, the power to leave oneself momentarily and become what one perceives, such a Grecian Urn or a Nightingale?
Or is “a mind of winter” a dead thing, so dormant, numb and blind that it does not perceive the nothingness everywhere around itself? I think this second interpretation makes more sense. The emphasis on “nothing” and absence in the concluding lines dictates the more pessimistic meaning of “a mind of winter” as an absence of awareness. The snow man is one who does not perceive (he fails to? refuses to?) the barrenness that should be pounding him in the face. He is one who cannot or will not see.
"I was blind but now I see"? Maybe "The Snow Man" is the grim flip-side of "Amazing Grace." Is one perspective more plausible than the other?
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.
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