Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

Imagination and the Mind

Stevens was known as a mental poet. No, not mental as in nutso, but mental as in he wrote poems about the mind—what it was, what it could do, what it could strive for. He was, in short, a poet of ideas. And ideas are nothing without imagination. Stevens believed that in imagining, we shape our own reality with our mind. Say, isn't that what this poem's all about?