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Created with Fabric.js 1.4.5 Poetry Project on "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens by Nelson Castro Winter Landscape What is at first seen to be a lovely description of Winter turns out to actually be a question of reality and creativity.The first stanza of the poem indicates that in order to regard the normal objects in a winter landscape, you must have a "mind of winter". That with this mind of winter, one could also, as later described in the poem, admire the beauty of what already is there, such as junipers and spruces. Because of this mindset, one tends not to think of anything abnormal in thee normal, right? But we're shown in this poem that in the very simple things, there lies more than meets the naked eye. The final stanza says, " For the listener, who listens in the snow, And,nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that it is." The meaning of this is that those that only see the normal objects that are present and does not behold something much greater, they lack seeing the true potential image of the object, and only simply see the plain object in front of them.The theme that Wallace Stevens tries to convey to the readers is thatone should use their imagination to create an image greater and morecreative and profound, rather than settle for seeing the image in which the masses see, the plain, old, boring reality. That the normal is of no valuewhen compared to the abnormal in which our creative minds construct. The poet uses words that sound symphonic and beautiful in the minds of the readers. He really paints a lovely picture to imagine, describing the "pine-trees crusted with snow, the junipers "shagged with ice", and "spruces rough in the distant glitter". The level of specificity in his choice of words starts the poem off wonderfully. But this description of the snowy landends and instead, Stevens brings up the "misery in the sound of the wind" and in "a few leaves". Usingthis darker idea, he captures the readers attention from these beautiful descriptions which could have originally fooled the readers into their original opinion on the meaning of the poem, to a new idea that because of the contrast in topics, pushes the readers to dig up the new meaning and potential themethat the poet is trying to convey. After this shift, he goes deeper in describing how the emptiness in this area and how the simplistic image is what makes it inferior to the image of one who does not thinkwith a "a mind of winter", but rather, one who is liberated in seeing a greater, more detailed andunique image. Not only does the poet manage to convey a unique and overlookedtheme, he does so by using shift when going from describing a beautiful description to a dreadful onein order to catch the reader's attention and redirect them to the true meaning of the poem. He uses the anaphora "Of the January sun" and "Of any misery in the sound of wind" to truly emphasizethat those that only see this cold winter fail to see or hear the things that their imagination can create.The alliteration used on "Which...sound...land...wind" is used to group the two lines together showing that it is one idea being described to further support the theme. Him personifying the wind to have a sound of misery is done in order to back up the theme because personification making the inhuman havehuman qualities or behavior, thus showing that even he expressed his creativity by making the choice of including such a line of personifiation.
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