In this podcast, I discuss Wallace Stevens's haunting and beautiful poem, "The Snow Man," in which someone enters a wintry landscape, savors the extreme bareness and simplicity of it, and enters a state in which his consciousness becomes nothing and reality itself loses its determinacy and becomes nothing. I discuss this experience in the Snow Man as a meditative experience recognizable in the Eastern traditions of spirituality. I raise questions about the desirability of this experience, as it suggests a cruel abstraction from reality and a desire to escape from the pressures of selfhood. I draw from the fascinating interpretation of William Bevis, in "Mind of Winter: Wallace Stevens, Meditation, and Literature."
