pō’ĭ-trē

Wallace Stevens

Listen (to hoon read)

Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.

In the place of the solitaires,
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.

Hoon adds,

A Speculative Analysis

The poet goes to the seashore
and sees there a man playing solitaire with a deck of cards
on the beach, and is struck by the similarity between the man’s game,
its ceaseless yet always varying repetition, and the action, motion, of
the sea itself. More though, the analogy is between the spirit behind
the game and the sea, that spirit being the mind.
And so he writes a poem about the nature of the human mind. It is a
series of mock edicts or decrees declaring that the mind is meant to be
as restless, even repetitious, as the sea, and that we are most
conscious of this mental restlessness when we are alone.
And so we are left to wonder: Is this entertainment? to the mind?
for it to see itself reflected in the vast mindless and unending
plungings of the sea?
Well, is it?

(The washing machine is, of course, yet another restless metaphor.)

[blackmamba]