Wallace Stevens' poetry reacted against the movement called Romanticism. In Romanticism, poets aligned their inner feelings with the changes of nature. For example, if the sky was overcast, then the poet's mood was gloomy. This tendency was labeled the "Pathetic Fallacy" by the literary critic John Ruskin, who called for more objectivity in poetry. Wallace Stevens' poetry is always objective, which causes readers to see it as bleak rather than hopeful. However, Stevens is calling for a clarity of mind that is more certain than emotions. For example, look at the final stanza of "The Snow Man":
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Stevens' frequent use of the word "nothing" does not evoke nihilism, but rather, it calls the reader to objectivity. Rather than focusing on the emotions that winter evokes, one should be aware of those emotions and to separate them from the enjoyment of the winter landscape.
James Thomson's lengthy poem cycle "The Seasons" is a staple of 18th century Augustan literature. Broken down into four parts, it offers a reflection on each of the seasons. In the section entitled "Winter," Thomson recounts the loss of the sun's warmth and the general dormancy of nature. If Stevens is criticizing Romanticism, Thomson is anticipating it. Throughout the poem, Thomson gives nature a personality. Personification occurs when inanimate objects are given human characteristics. So, for example, the sun's decreasing warmth is not attributed to the elliptical orbit of the earth, but to the sun's struggle to shine through the cloud cover. The forest groans, the birds are fearful and the sheep are filled with "dumb despair." Stevens rejected such depictions, but the Romantics (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats) embraced them.
Robert Frost is one of America's most beloved poets. Born in California, Frost taught Greek and Latin in New England, falling in love with the area and using it as the setting for the majority of his poems. His poetry has a remarkable versatility and depth, and one of his best poems is about winter and the affect it can have on us. Frost finds the middle ground between Stevens and Thomson: There are both objective and subjective aspects of nature, and they can be experienced simultaneously. In "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," the narrator finds a snow-covered field to be absolutely mesmerizing. In fact, he is so caught up that his horse has to shake him from his reverie. Frost subtly alludes to Dante's "Inferno" when he locates his narrator "Between the woods and frozen lake" (Dante's poem begins in a dark wood and ends in the depths of Hell, which is a frozen lake). Frost shows a darker side of meditation that both Stevens and Thomson cannot.
William Shakespeare's sonnets have stood the test of time for more than 400 years. Their poetic and thematic variety serve well as an education for young poets. In "Sonnet 73," we see the transition between fall and winter, and its effect upon the speaker. Rather than succumbing to the Pathetic Fallacy, Shakespeare establishes an analogy between winter and the speaker's age--winter becomes a point of comparison rather than a reflection of the speaker's age. In this poem, Shakespeare focuses upon the fact that spring will emerge once more. The speaker compares himself to the burning embers of a log. On the outside, it appears to be burned through, but on the inside is a glowing coal. Thus, Shakespeare encourages readers to look beyond appearances.