The Wind Shifts

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"The Wind Shifts" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain. [1]

Contents

The Wind Shifts

 This is how the wind shifts:
 Like the thoughts of an old human,
 Who still thinks eagerly
 And despairingly.
 The wind shifts like this:
 Like a human without illusions,
 Who still feels irrational things within her.
 The wind shifts like this:
 Like humans approaching proudly,
 Like humans approaching angrily.
 This is how the wind shifts:
 Like a human, heavy and heavy,
 Who does not care.

Interpretation

"The wind shifts" explains why John Gould Fletcher detected a poet out of tune with life and with his surroundings. (See the main Harmonium essay.)

Buttel cites this poem as an example of Stevens's mastery of repetition within free verse. The repetition of "the wind shifts" underscores the associated human feelings, and "heavy and heavy" adds to the effect of leaden monotony.

Notes

  1. Buttel, p. 136. See also Librivox Archived 2010-10-13 at the Wayback Machine

Related Research Articles

<i>Harmonium</i> (poetry collection) Book by Wallace Stevens

Harmonium is a book of poetry by American poet Wallace Stevens. His first book at the age of forty-four, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. This collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred. Harmonium was reissued in 1931 with three poems omitted and fourteen new poems added.

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"Sunday Morning" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium. Published in part in the November 1915 issue of Poetry, then in full in 1923 in Harmonium, it is now in the public domain. The first published version can be read at the Poetry web site: The literary critic Yvor Winters considered "Sunday Morning" "the greatest American poem of the twentieth century and... certainly one of the greatest contemplative poems in English".

"The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.

"Stars at Tallapoosa" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain.

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"Tattoo" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1916, so it is in the public domain. Librivox has made the poem available in voice recording in its The Complete Public Domain Poems of Wallace Stevens.

"Theory" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain.

"Hymn From A Watermelon Pavilion" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain.

"The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. First published in 1921, it is in the public domain in the United States.

"The Death of a Soldier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. The poem uses free verse to describe the death of a soldier.

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"Tea" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1915 in the journal Rogue.

References