This final section of "Six Significant Landscapes," by attorney and insurance executive (and poet) Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), playfully explores the limitations of rigid thinking.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
cones, waving lines, ellipses—
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon—
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
"Six Significant Landscapes" is found in Wallace Stevens: The Collected Poems (Vintage Books, 1990). Previous postings of work by Wallace Stevens happened on May 4 and in 2010 on December 15.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Would rationalists wear sombreros?
Labels:
ellipse,
mathematics,
poetry,
prose poem,
rationalists,
rhomboid,
right-angled triangle,
square,
Wallace Stevens
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