A Poem to End Poetry Month

Just because April has ended, we don't have to stop reading poetry. And because I like the poems of Wallace Stevens, and because talented kids' book writer Jo Knowles wrote such a thoughtful blogpost about this one, I'll share it here, putting an exclamation point at the end of Poetry Month. Vowing to read more, all year round.



The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm
By Wallace Stevens

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.