Analysis of The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)



There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.


Scheme XA AX XA BX XA BX XX
Poetic Form
Metre 111111 01011011010 111100 10101110011110 1010111110 01111011010 111101 10010111011 1011111 1111010101010 0011111 10101101011111 11110101101 1010101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 586
Words 113
Sentences 4
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 66
Words per stanza (avg) 16
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

33 sec read
104

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. more…

All Wallace Stevens poems | Wallace Stevens Books

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