The Sleight-of-Hand Man is
a figure who represents the poet and appears in the title of Wallace Stevens' poem "The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man," published in the Parts of a World collection in 1942. In his 1935 letter to Ronald Lane Latimer, Stevens writes: "Titles with me are, of course, of the highest importance. [1] His statement in the letter is of "highest importance," as well, upon first glance at the poem. The title appears to be unrelated to its subject matter, and significantly, the reader's eyes return to the title throughout a close reading of the poem in order to make "sense" of what Stevens is trying to communicate with his seemingly disconnected title and poem. This disconnect is actually the first clue to the poem's subtle meaning, and the Sleight-of-Hand Man becomes the focal point. The poem is deceptively simple, in that the poet appears to describe without guile everyday natural events that trigger imaginative thought; however, with a "sleight-of-hand," the poet returns the reader from the abstraction of the imagination to the descriptive language of the everyday events. Marie Borroff writes that the occurrences within the poem "belong both to the external world . . . and the world within." She continues with the idea that "the mind responds in accordance with its own fluctuations of vitality and mood" to the seasons and the weather and that as a consequence, "reality 'occurs' independently of our expectations." [2] Stevens departs from the sleight-of-hand manipulation of language and sums up the poem with the supposition that it is only "the ignorant man, alone" (16) [3] who can "say of [reality] what it 'occurs' [him] to say" [2] and "mate his life with life . . . [t]hat is fluent in even the wintriest bronze" (17-19). [3] The reader can surmise from Stevens' concluding departure that he is not the ignorant man; the poet is the elusive magician working within the framework of an elusive reality.
Notes[]
1. Stevens in Kermode and Richardson 941.
2. Borroff 184.
3. Stevens in Kermode and Richardson 205.
References[]
Borroff, Marie. "Wallace Stevens World of Words II." Modern Philology 74.2 (Nov. 1976): 171-93. JSTOR. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.
Kermode, Frank, and Joan Richardson, eds. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print.
Stevens, Wallace. Letter to Ronald Lane Lattimer. 26 Nov. 1935. Kermode and Richardson 941.
---. "The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man." Kermode and Richardson 205.