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Tattoo (poem)
Poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium
Poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium
"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.
The light is like a spider. It crawls over the water. It crawls over the edges of the snow. It crawls under your eyelids And spreads its webs there— Its two webs.
The webs of your eyes Are fastened To the flesh and bones of you As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes On the surface of the water And in the edges of the snow.
Interpretation
Buttel detects Imagistic technique in the poem's Whitman-like naming of physical details. In response to nature, man's natural architecture of flesh and bones has developed so as to catch nature's beauty. We are tattoo'd by it, but equally we tattoo nature with human sensibility.
Notes
References
- Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
External links
References
- Buttel, p. 131
- Buttel, p. 131-2
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