The Plain Sense of Things by Wallace Stevens is, on the surface, a poem about a once grandiose house that has turned to ruin. However, once the poem is more thoughtfully looked at, a whole new meaning appears. The poem is depicting sadness, depression, and despair as a reflection of the house. The author Wallace Stevens, wants to show how pitiful life can be. For example, "For this blank cold, this sadness without cause", leads the reader to a hopeless future. "A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition in a repetitiousness of men and flies" reinforces this idea of a depressing future. The title The Plain Sense of Things is a symbol for the ugliness of the house and how it needs help. Wallace states, "The great pond, the plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves, mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, the great pond and its waste of lilies". The great pond is not great. It is disgusting and filled with muddy water which ruins the beauty of the lilies. The rat is the only living thing who is willing to come near, and rats are ugly. This scene of the house is one of disgust. Wallace Stevens wants to leave the reader with a clear message, life is disgusting and depressing at its core. Without all the pretty fluff of life (as per the falling leaves), humanity is broken and ugly (as per the ruined house).
The arrangement of the poem is one that balances concrete references and abstract thought. The concrete consists of vision and evidence for the imaginative references Stevens depicts. The beginning stanzas pose a problem and the ending stanzas reach a resolution. There are five stanzas. Each stanza has four lines. The title is a reoccurring phrase in the actual poem because it shows the authors main idea that once you strip the world to its core and disregard the pretty exterior, it is ugly and depressing.
Question: What conclusion is Stevens trying to reach with his talk of the imagination? I am confused with this part of the poem.
