ABSTRACT
However boldly Williams pronounced himself in favor of the immediacy of "things", Stevens does not pour himself into experience in the same way. It is not he or the poem's speaker who is engulfed, it cannot be, for the poem is a demonstration of style, a way of bearing oneself in reality. An intriguing aspect of Steven's mind is his use of the rabbi figure in his poetry, a pattern he was aware of and addressed himself to in his letters. It is not that Stevens begins his thought with a strong sentiment on behalf of humanity, advanced in a world that lacked objects of piety. A clue to his mind can be found in that his testament on poetry makes use the word "noble" as if it might replace "beauty" or the "beautiful". She leaps and vanishes, the great cat of the phenomenal world, and the auroral mind confronts its own eclipse.
