Another Weeping Woman
Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten.
Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.
The magnificent cause of being,
The imagination, the one reality
In this imagined world
Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves,
And you are pierced by a death.
"Another Weeping Woman" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.
This poem tells of a woman who is grieving for someone who has died. The triumvirate of imagination, world, and reality is at work. Reality then has its special Stevensian meaning as the world's "being", its vivification and articulation by the imagination. Grieving's "black blooms" occlude her imagination, leaving her in a similar state to the deceased "for whom no phantasy moves". Thus is she poisoned. The poem may be compared to "The Snow Man" and "The Emperor of Ice Cream".
The poem can be read as an expression of romantic idealism, but among those who concern themselves with the philosophical implications of Stevens's poetry, Simon Critchley resists this interpretation.[1]
Notes
References
- Critchley, Simon. things merely are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens. 2005: Routledge.