Sunday Morning Poem
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In his poem "Sunday Morning," Stevens writes a work that flows and has musical qualities especially striking in blank verse, though his imagery is once more dense and requires close reading to understand. The poem is one of his earlier works and was published in his Harmonium. The poem is a religious work, and its reference to "Sunday Morning" is to that time when people are supposed to begin contemplating the life of Christ and its meaning to them. In the woman who is pictured in the opening passages we find someone in whom is embodied the tension between body and spirit, between the pleasures of this world and the contemplations of the next. The image is of a woman who has just arisen on a Sunday morning and who is settling down in comfort to enjoy the pleasures of this world, and Stevens evokes these pleasures in striking images centering on the opening words "Complacencies of the peignoir" (1), the woman having just arisen and now settling down in he peignoir without examining her actions or the need for spiritual enlightenment instead of "Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair" (2). These things plus the "green freedom of a cockatoo/ Upon a rug mingle to dissipate/ The holy hush of ancient sacrifice" (3-5). The ancient sacrifice referred to is the crucifixion, and while the first stanza details the behavior of the woman and the lushness of her surroundings, the second raises direct philosophical issues related to how she spends her Sunday mornings:
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the woman were relating the story as it happens. In her thoughts she raises questions about God and refers to other gods, such as Jove, or the savage gods worshiped by the "ring of men" chanting on a summer morn in stanza seven. The plight of modern man is detailed in stanza eight:
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free
Of that wide water, inescapable (110-113).
We are surrounded by old religions, and the sun for the woman is itself a religious object that brings life and warmth. It is also the object she "worships" on this Sunday morning, and she feels comfortable finding the meaning of her spiritual life in the natural wonders of this world. The poem seems to take us through the course of a day, from the warm sun of the morning to the final image of birds dropping into the darkness of an evening:
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings (117-120).
The old religions are to be reconsidered and perhaps replaced, but Stevens does not see them as worthless or as something to be obliterated, only transmuted. Religion becomes enmeshed in th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Morning Stevens, Virgin Mary, pleasures world, bounty dead, shadows dreams, silent shadows dreams, , ancient sacrifice, divinity silent shadows, comforts sun, evokes pleasures, silent shadows, birds mentioned, iambic pentameter, woman arisen,
Approximate Word count = 1252
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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