Wallace Stevens does what he does best in this poem: explores the relationship between his language and the physical world.
Stevens takes a physical mountain, and recomposes it into language, hence the title, The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain. He’s trying to find the perfect perspective.
There could be a correlation between the seven couplets and the seven days it took God to create the world in the Christian creation story (more on this in the annotations). The speaker is essentially playing God, but with language.
Professor Langdon Hammer of Yale University has a great lecture on this poem online, which you can find here.
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Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning