1answer.
Ask question
Login Signup
Ask question
All categories
  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Social Studies
  • Business
  • History
  • Health
  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Technology
  • Arts
  • World Languages
  • Spanish
  • French
  • German
  • Advanced Placement (AP)
  • SAT
  • Medicine
  • Law
  • Engineering
kozerog [31]
3 years ago
9

What is the meaning of the poem domination of black by Wallace Stevens?

English
1 answer:
erastova [34]3 years ago
5 0
Wallace Stevens chose “Domination of Black” from 1916 as his own favorite poem for the 1942 anthology America’s 93 Greatest Living Authors Present This Is My Best…<span> (Dial Press) with the following statement (p. 652):</span>
The themes of life are the themes of poetry. It seems to be, so clearly, that what is the end of life for the politician or the philosopher, say, ought to be the end of life for the poet, and that his important poems ought to be the poems of the achievement of that end. But poetry is neither politics nor philosophy. Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry, precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music. There are poets who would regard that as a scandal and who would say that a poem that had no importance except its importance as poetry had no importance at all, and that a poet who had no objective except to achieve poetry was a fribble and something less than a man of reason.<span>This lawyerly masterpiece of circular reasoning (poetry is good – unlike other areas of life – because it is good poetry), inasmuch as it means anything beyond the customary come-hither smokescreen of the artist, suggests that the worth of poetry lies in qualities beyond logical explanation, beyond formal concerns, as inaccessible to laymen as to poets themselves. “The themes of life” are the themes of poetry, but its value lies in something different that is unique to poetry. Let’s see if we can unravel this </span>differance. Here is the poem:

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

<span>This poem, read aloud, is a great example of the way Stevens creates his stately yet dynamic rhythms through repetition. The same word emphasized in different ways, in different accentual structures, brings with it an eerie weight that, in this case, where multiple words are carried throughout the whole poem, unifies the whole with a stillness and grandeur. In the 190 words of the poem, the words "wind", "cry", "leaves", "hemlocks", "peacocks", "themselves" and "I" are all repeated </span>five<span> times, while the words "turning" (6), "turned"(3), "fire"(3), "remembered", "loud", "heavy", "tails", "room", "twilight", "striding" (2 times each) are also repeated. The phrases "like the leaves themselves" and "the cry of the peacocks" are each repeated three times (four if you count minor variations). It’s as if Stevens has invented his own style, the mournful villanelle wrought to an extreme. The repetitions encompass the elements (earth/leaves, fire, air/wind), a rare use of the first person (interesting in that context that Stevens chose this as his personal favorite), and a number of words rich in symbolic meanings, most notably the rhyming "peacocks" and "hemlocks." </span>

<span>Dramatically, the poem moves through an extended comparison of a flickering fireplace fire with first the autumn leaves literally reflected from the outside into the room, then to the colors of peacocks tails (and the encroaching night to the dark green of hemlock trees). Then the noise the fire makes is compared to the noises of both peacocks and hemlocks (with some questioning of who is talking and listening to whom), and finally the planets in the sky seem like the same turning of the leaves, the changing of the seasons, a holistic sense of relatedness that soon resolves both in the fireplace and outside to darkness. This encroachment of night scares the speaker, but he remembers the cry of the peacock and feels better.</span>
You might be interested in
Solve this analogy problem: saw : cut :: needle :
dezoksy [38]
It would make sense to say "sew".


5 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
Explore the ways in which Bronte creates sympathy for the girls at Lowood school.
givi [52]

Answer:

Bronte creates sympathy for the girls at Lowood school by employing the literary device of personification and starkly describing the girls' less than favorable living conditions in the school.

Explanation:

  • Bronte described Jane's first morning at Lowood school during a winter, the water in the pitchers the girls are meant to use for their morning ablutions are frozen and yet they have to use the water like that.
  • During breakfast they were served burnt porridge they could not eat and consequently had to suffer through the morning to lunch time without eating anything, an event that Bronte suggested happened more than once.
  • The girls are denied simple and harmless luxuries like keeping their natural curls and wearing clean stockings, a fact that ironically contrasts with the way the proprietor's family present themselves in artificial finery.
  • When disease struck the inhabitants of Lowood Bronte described the dismal atmosphere using personification: "while disease had thus became an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor; while there was gloom within its walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells." All the makes the reader feel sympathetic towards the girls, as they are living in conditions that are not fit to be lived in.
6 0
3 years ago
Ben's Doggone Dog Blog Which is the counterargument? bc O The clicking method works only with small dogs. O The clicking method
Naddika [18.5K]

<em><u>B</u></em><em><u>. The clicking method does not work in noisy places.</u></em>

8 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
In what type of writing would you see the theme?
eimsori [14]

Answer:

You can see a theme in any kind of writing.

Explanation:

3 0
3 years ago
In “Captain Canot, or Twenty Years of an African Slaver,” how does the author develop the central idea that transporting enslave
Nata [24]

Answer:

by explaining how a captive’s condition was assessed.

Explanation:

The author developed the central idea that transporting enslaved captives was a trade just like any other in "Captain Canot" or "Twenty Years of an African Slaver" by explaining how a captive’s condition was assessed.

Most trades or all trades have profit as its main driving force, and profit cannot be made if the goods you sell is not good enough, so slave masters had to assess a captive's condition to find out if he was good enough to make a profit or not just like any other trade.

8 0
2 years ago
Read 2 more answers
Other questions:
  • What is the positive and negative side of New Years
    13·1 answer
  • Is the passage of dialogue written correctly or incorrectly?
    12·1 answer
  • Use the past tense of the verb begin to complete the following sentence.<br> The band to play
    10·2 answers
  • What challenge do presidents in particular face when persuading an
    11·2 answers
  • During World War II, the military developed pesticides to help protect soldiers at war from disease-carrying insects. After the
    5·1 answer
  • (1) Peter and Chris decided to open their own business.
    12·1 answer
  • The dog is black, brown, and white.<br> a<br> simple<br> b<br> compound<br> с<br> complex
    15·1 answer
  • Francis heard that a car stereo system was on sale for 30 off. If the sale price was $57.75 what was the original price of the s
    13·1 answer
  • 1. The word parched means-<br> a. Sad<br> b. Dry<br> c. Thick<br> d. Muddy
    10·2 answers
  • Which event is part of the rising action in "Little Snow White"? O Snow White eats the apple and falls into a deep sleep. O Snow
    6·1 answer
Add answer
Login
Not registered? Fast signup
Signup
Login Signup
Ask question!