“THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATEIClear water in a brilliant bowl, Pink and white carnations. The lightIn the room more like a snowy air, Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snowAt the end of winter when afternoons return.Pink and white carnations - one desiresSo much more than that. The day itselfIs simplified: a bowl of white, Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,With nothing more than the carnations there.IISay even that this complete simplicityStripped one of all one's torments, concealedThe evilly compounded, vital IAnd made it fresh in a world of white,A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,Still one would want more, one would need more,More than a world of white and snowy scents.IIIThere would still remain the never-resting mind,So that one would want to escape, come backTo what had been so long composed.The imperfect is our paradise.Note that, in this bitterness, delight,Since the imperfect is so hot in us,Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”

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About Wallace Stevens

American modernist poet

Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he lived from 1879 to 1955. He is known for writing poems that shaped American modernism while also working much of his life in the insurance business. He studied at Harvard and later at New York Law School before settling into a long career as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut. His poetry is often noted for its careful language, philosophical reach, and attention to imagination, perception, and the relationship between reality and the mind.

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