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Comment 6 of 6, added on December 4th, 2007 at 8:33 PM.
Very nice imagery,but either Stevens didn't own a cat, or didn't pay much
attention to it. The night is prime hunting time. I live on an old farm
in the woods with a 16 year old cat that can still take down rabbits,
squirrels, and mice and moles by the hundreds, and she often does it at
night. look at a cat's eyes sometime in the evening, their pupils are
gigantic- Great for night vision. If Stevens was trying to pass along a
pastoral image of safety shrouded in the coming dark, he needs to take a
closer look at the cats eyes.
mark larson
Comment 5 of 6, added on May 17th, 2007 at 6:30 PM.
to "fill the four corners of night" is the blissful state of feeling in
harmony with the world. stevens worked as an insurance agent during the
day-- in the night, he felt his poetic self come alive. the "rabbit" is of
course a weird image for the poetic self-- but the poetic self is an
eccentric self.
the shifts in size that the rabbit and the cat go suggest a power struggle
between them-- the poet is trying to whittle away the presence of the cat,
because the cat stands in the way of the ability of the rabbit to feel
fully inspired. The cat, in my view, stands for the unhappy domestic life
that stevens lived (his wife was somewhat insane, totally against his
poetic enterprises, and they were unhappily married).
By reducing the cat, in the end, to a little bug, the poem ends
optimistically. But night doesn't last forever-- it is a cyclical struggle
that the poet will have to go through.
p from United States
Comment 4 of 6, added on May 14th, 2007 at 8:13 AM.
I have to Recite this poem for a project
Catherine from United States
Comment 3 of 6, added on April 7th, 2007 at 12:07 PM.
One should remember that not thinking, experiencing only, can be fatal.
The rabbit, by the end, is so full of himself that the lurking cat seems
benign, even insignificant.
C. Wolford from United States
Comment 2 of 6, added on January 11th, 2006 at 10:49 AM.
hello sir i want sort poem on rabbit thanx
nishil from India
Comment 1 of 6, added on June 4th, 2005 at 3:44 PM.
This poem is perhaps Stevens exercising great inter-species imagination to
get inside the experience of a rabbit sitting motionless in the grass in
the fading light of a summer's day. But I suspect Stevens is also uses the
rabbit's imagined sitting experience to explore his own experience of
simply experiencing without thinking (cf. The Snow Man and The Latest Freed
Man).
Mike Landay from United Kingdom
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Very nice imagery,but either Stevens didn't own a cat, or didn't pay much
attention to it. The night is prime hunting time. I live on an old farm
in the woods with a 16 year old cat that can still take down rabbits,
squirrels, and mice and moles by the hundreds, and she often does it at
night. look at a cat's eyes sometime in the evening, their pupils are
gigantic- Great for night vision. If Stevens was trying to pass along a
pastoral image of safety shrouded in the coming dark, he needs to take a
closer look at the cats eyes.
mark larson