Analysis of The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man

Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)



One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the soul
Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds
Occurred above the empty house and the leaves
Of the rhododendrons rattled their gold,
As if someone lived there. Such floods of white
Came bursting from the clouds. So the wind
Threw its contorted strength around the sky.

Could you have said the bluejay suddenly
Would swoop to earth? It is a wheel, the rays
Around the sun. The wheel survives the myths.
The fire eye in the clouds survives the gods.
To think of a dove with an eye of grenadine
And pines that are cornets, so it occurs,
And a little island full of geese and stars:
It may be the ignorant man, alone,
Has any chance to mate his life with life
That is the sensual, pearly spuse, the life
That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.


Scheme XXXXXXXX XXXXAXXABBX
Poetic Form
Metre 111111 111010101 0111011101 01010101001 1011011 111111111 110101101 1101010101 111101100 1111110101 0101010101 01010010101 1110111111 011111101 00101011101 1110100101 1101111111 11010010101 1110010011
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 810
Words 154
Sentences 10
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 11
Lines Amount 19
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 323
Words per stanza (avg) 76
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

47 sec read
231

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. more…

All Wallace Stevens poems | Wallace Stevens Books

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