Of Mere Being
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
~Wallace Stevens, 1954~
36 comments
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June 3, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Dave Crocco
The key is the seventh and eighth lines. When you have transcended the world you understand, in a way that was not previously possible, that nothing in the world “makes us happy or unhappy”; there is no “it” from which we derive happiness or its opposite. Happiness wells up from within.
His greatest poem.
June 13, 2012 at 11:05 am
menumuse
Things in the world certainly make us happy or unhappy, but it is their being that does so, not their meaning, not their reason. fire-fangled feathers (Steven’s language, his song) make us happy, not their meaning, their being. As Picasso said around the same time: do we ask the bird to interpret his song for us? Why the artist? The point is most pointedly not transcendence. “Let be be finale of seem”
October 3, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Joseph Dennis
Agreed. “Fire fangled feathers” alone is a poem.
January 22, 2013 at 11:50 am
Tom Martin
I agree – his greatest poem. I used in one of my philosophy classes to illustrate the “self” in Sartre’s Existentialism. The students were surprisingly attentive as I used initially obscure imagery to explain another.obscure concept. It was my favorite lecture.
I should note that the last word in the third line should read “decor”, not “distance.”
May 5, 2013 at 5:14 am
Bruce
Shining a light annihilates God.
June 3, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Dan
Thank you, Dave. A beautiful explanation. Best to you.
June 21, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Oscar
According to the comments of the editor (Holly Stevens) in the Stevens’ anthology, “The Palm at the End of the Mind,” the word “distance” in line 3 was a mistake in an earlier published version, and the word should be “decor.”
It’s possible that this is not universally accepted.
February 1, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Jim Taylor
I concur with Oscar’s last comment. Holly Stevens changed that word after her father’s death. I’m sure there is a building mountain of apocrypha that surrounds this little difference. But, as for me the Holly Steven’s version is disappointing.
It’s also difficult to say which poem is the poet’s greatest, but suffice it to say, this one lingers for a lifetime…
February 12, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Kay Stuntz
Great discussion, but if I had been Stevens’ daughter I would have said, “Dad, don’t you mean, like, “distance” or something? It is at the end of the mind after all.”
I think this poem has one of the all time best last lines.
June 21, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Dan
Oscar
Yes, I know the revised version and do not want to seem disrespectful to the poet. Yet I grew up with the “distance” version and have a fondness for it. When I decided to use the poem as an inspiration for this blog, I intentionally chose the mistaken version.
June 22, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Oscar
I understand. The first version I read used decor. If later I had found out that “distance” was correct I might well have reacted similarly.
One thinks of Auden, who deliberately changed his poems. I prefer his original elegy for Yeats, but then the original version was the one that I read first. Would I feel differently if that were reversed? I do not know.
June 22, 2009 at 9:07 pm
DKO
Ah yes, thank you for that, Oscar. Poems become part of us and, treasured memories, our intimacy with them determines a preference…
September 18, 2009 at 6:37 am
josephine
i love this poem it is the best one of his that i read so far
October 24, 2009 at 1:23 pm
c holland
i love stevens but i would never try to reduce his poems to an “explanation.” i think he wrote to go beyond explanation and reason, to penetrate the wall that language throws up between us and reality. there’s that “old sailor, drunk and asleep in his boots, [who] dreams of tiger in red weather.” you yield to him, you don’t reduce him to meaning.
October 28, 2009 at 11:15 am
Harry B. Williams
Poets, by the nature of the work, seem to demand an intellectual explanation of the meaning of what they write. However, Stevens seems more like the Zen poet who points at the moon to “explain” the moon.
When the tiger devours us, no intellectual explanation will be adequate.
Stevens points with words that talk about what Yeats called “the thing that was before the world was made.”
February 8, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Holly Lev
I like this poem, and it means alot.
February 8, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Simply Poet
truly a classic !!
do check out
http://www.simplypoet.com
And our classic section for more awesome verses
February 18, 2010 at 7:29 pm
maxomus61
The final line has always reminded me of Hopkins’ “as kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame . . .” The elegance of a bird’s feathers is explained in alchemy, the divine energy that “dangles down”. A flicker of movement is exalted through the experience of seeing.
September 25, 2010 at 5:31 am
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February 1, 2011 at 1:45 pm
clefstick
John Gray (e.g. “Straw Dogs”) refers passionately to this poem. He is writing about a way of negotiating a stance toward death that does not propose or presuppose an Hereafter.
February 3, 2011 at 8:40 am
Harry B. Williams
Hereafter, whereafter, what u after?
The priest who claimed Stevens had a deathbed conversion ot Catholicism needed to be asked the question “what u after?”
June 12, 2011 at 2:27 am
Wilhelmina
Harry please e-mail me. Need to discuss something with you. Kind regards. Wilhelmina.
June 9, 2011 at 4:48 am
Wilhelmina
Harry B. Williams please contact me I want to discuss something with you.
June 16, 2011 at 5:28 am
Maria Lamburn
This fantastic poem inspired the composition Murmur – title track of debut cd Murmur by Madalena (Bable Label BDV2027) On the album the cor anglais plays the melody (originally set to this poem by Maria Lamburn, 1979), and an additional narrative (also by ML) in the middle section manifests a vision of transient earthliness, offsetting the invisible presence of Stevens’ other-worldliness.
August 12, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Bob Moore
I’m not sure why, but this poem reminds me of his poem “Poems of Our Climate”. I imagine that the palm at the end of the mind, is a hand attempting to grasp (to know) what a bird experiences as a living creature, but the bird could be any living creature (with humans as an exception). A bird as an example seems to be in tune with its surroundings, and appears (to us anyway) to celebrate it daily with song as a ritual. There is a distance between this experience and our own experience (represented by the mind). I think this is why Stevens places the palm at the end of the mind, to represent that distance. I realize as was mentioned earier that the word “distance” is a revision from an earlier poem. I still like it. I agree with Dave C. that the key to the poem is lines 7 and 8. It, the bird (or its song) is not the reason that makes us happy or unhappy. What makes us happy or unhappy is our inability to celebrate the day each day as a bird does. The honus is on us to change (if we could) but referencing Steven’s “Poems of Our Climate”, ‘the imperfect is our paradise’. We can’t seem to sense what a bird senses everyday, and it is noone’s fault but our own. I also agree with Dave C. about the greatness of the poem. A wonderful comment on the human condition.
October 19, 2011 at 10:55 am
Epicharis
What if the poem is a recognition of the presence of another, or the ‘other’, without preconception?
October 19, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Clefstick
Epicharis, maybe if the the other is the reader or the listener to the poem sharing only that art as a known means to become a confidant.
October 20, 2011 at 3:37 am
harrybonewilliams
Almost all of Stevens’ poems (and particularly this one) are Jedi mind tricks.
October 24, 2011 at 1:54 pm
will
Wallace was sublime…try reading the work backwards…second lines to third and vice a versa…it’s epic
January 3, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Ken
To those comments and commentators above on lines 7 and 8:
I enjoyed your thoughts! I have evolved toward a somewhat different reading of those lines, one that changes the interpretation of the entire poem:
“You know then that it is not The Reason
That makes us happy or unhappy….”
The poem is no longer about “it” or the bird’s state of being. We hear and see “it’s” aesthetic, but the poem has us abandon thought or reasoning to get there. It’s not about the unknown state inside a fantasy bird. It’s a thinking person’s experience of true beauty that, then, is mere being.
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May 31, 2012 at 8:09 am
Bill Greene
” It is not the reason…”
I always thought he meant “the reason,” as in our reasoning, our ability to reason. That our happiness or unhappiness comes from a place beyond reason.
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