The Jack-Rabbit
"The Jack-Rabbit" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923).
Overview
In the morning,
The jack-rabbit sang to the Arkansaw.
He carolled in caracoles
On the feat sandbars.
The black man said,
"Now, grandmother,
Crochet me this buzzard
On your winding-sheet,
And do not forget his wry neck
After the winter."
The black man said,
"Look out, O caroller,
The entrails of the buzzard
Are rattling."
The jack-rabbit's joyful jig contrasts with the prospect of its demise, anticipated by the black man who invokes a symbol of death that applies both to his grandmother and her burial garment, and to the dancing jack-rabbit. Buttel views the black man's words as a fusion of the native folk tradition with the motif of sewing and embroidering from
Notes
- ^ Buttel, p. 199.
References
- Buttel, R. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. Princeton University Press, 1968.
- Kermode, Frank and Joan Richardson, eds, Stevens: Collected Poetry & Prose. Library of America, 1997.