AustLit

'‘The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully”, the great American modernist poet Wallace Stevens wrote in his poem Man Carrying Thing. In this ode to difficulty, Stevens praises the idea that the poem should include “parts not quite perceived / of the obvious whole, uncertain particles” and be made of “things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow / Out of a storm we must endure all night” before, as morning breaks, “The bright obvious stands motionless in cold”.' (Introduction)