Wallace Stevens

I thought I would do the in class assignment that we were given today, focusing on the poem, "The Plain Sense of Things." 

My initial interpretation was that the poem was about the importance of imagination.  He is saying that essentially everyone who is living imagines, "Yet the absence of imagination had itself yet to be imagined."  The only way you can actually experience this was through death, and if not death something like it. 

The best interpretation came from Gary C. Gibson.  The best quote to sum up would be, "It is in this grim outlook, the time of year when the sun has not just set low in the sky to add a surreal context for colors-when the sun is approaching its most vacating presence and colors have turned gray, when our constructions seem tawdry, that the plain sense of things becomes evident."

The most inventive interpretation that I found online was from Barbara M. Fisher.  This line was a very clever way to describe the feeling of the poem,  "It is not the great cloud of tragedy but an unresolved diminished seventh."  Being a musicy kind of guy I know what that could sound like.  Something is just, off, which is a perfect description of the feeling this poem gave.

I did find most of the interpretations to be pretty solid, but if i had to choose it would be the one by Anthony Whiting.  Could have been because they took only a small clip of his argument, but I was only partially convinced of his points.

One thing I found on youtube that had to do with this poem was another grey moustached man wearing woman's glasses reading poetry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBt26u_1nIw

I also found this on the interweb.  Wish I had found it sooner, it was a massive help, and it makes it much easier to see the brilliance in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry.
http://www.paullaurencedunbar.net/antebellumsermon.html

Sources:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/sense.htm

http://www.helium.com/items/1676699-wallace-stevens-life-and-works