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“Man Carrying Thing” by Wallace Stevens 🇺🇸 (2 Oct 1879 – 2 Aug 1955)
The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:
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A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists
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The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived
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Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,
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Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,
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Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.
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We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.