Analysis of The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad

Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)



The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know:
I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant on the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian . . .
Perhaps if summer ever came to rest
And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed
Through days like oceans in obsidian

Horizons, full of night's midsummer blaze;
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate,
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;

One might in turn become less diffident,
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.


Scheme ABBC DDXX BEEX FGGF AHHC
Poetic Form Quatrain  (60%)
Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 011111010 1110001001 1101000111 111101101 0101010100 11010101 1011001101 0101010100 0100101 0111010111 0101010001 1111000100 0101111101 011101110 1111010101 010101101 11010111 111110101 0101010101 1111111101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 775
Words 138
Sentences 11
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 125
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

41 sec read
84

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. more…

All Wallace Stevens poems | Wallace Stevens Books

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