"Of Mere Being" by Wallace Stevens

I'm continually surprised by how true your statement about these weekly blogs has been, Mrs. White. If I don't understand a poem at first and start over-analyzing it, I come back to it in a successive week, and suddenly it reveals some certain meaning to me.

This poem was definitely one of those. I read it last week but didn't see any symbolism within, so I put it off for a week. I am so glad I did.

The basic stanza organization in this poem is four unrhyming tercets with no constant meter. Each tercet reveals a unique aspect to the poem, illustrating a different facet of Stevens' theme.

The first tercet describes a palm tree while the second, a "gold-feathered" and fiery bird. Originally, I had trouble deciphering these symbols until I thought, "What is my first connection when I think of each of these objects?" Then I understood. I think of tropical islands, paradise, when I think of palms, and the bird instantly brought to mind a phoenix, a symbol for rebirth. Therefore, the two first stanzas act to set up a physical representation of heaven, paradise at "the end of the mind, beyond the last thought," and the afterlife, the bird in the tree.

The third stanza then defines the poem's theme. Stevens suggests that the quest for heaven and the afterlife is not really a deciding factor in the happiness of our lives. The concepts are foreign to us, "without human feeling," and as such are incapable of being understood, "without human meaning." I don't think Stevens means this as much a knock on religion as an instruction for people to appreciate the life they have on earth.

Any meaning derived from the fourth stanza, I believe, is personal interpretation. I see the tercet as placing the palm and bird in an idyllic pose, that they are waiting for their time to be experienced.