“One must have a mind of winter.”

“Divinity must live within herself:Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow;Grievings in loneliness, or unsubduedElations when the forest blooms; gustyEmotions on wet roads on autumn nights;All pleasures and all pains, rememberingThe boughs of summer and the winter branch.These are the measures destined for her soul.”

“One must read poetry with one's nerves.”

“The Snow Man"One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to thinkOf any misery in the sound of the wind,In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the landFull of the same windThat is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,And, nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. (Vintage; Reissue edition February 19, 1990)”

“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.”

“The mind can never be satisfied.”

“The poem must resist the intelligenceAlmost successfully.”