Stevens and the Dangerous Mirror

　 The human imagination, the ability to perceive another kind of reality made purely of thought, has always been the muse of artists and writers alike. Poets especially prize this human ability to imagine and create because it is the essence of their work, both for the poet nad the reader. However, Wallace Stevens admired the imagination more than anyother contemporary writer and poet. In Wallace Steven's article titled Imagination as Value, he is writing this in opposition to Pascal's claim that imagination is the deceptive element of man. Steve's disagrees with that notion, he believes that imagination is what makes man productive. Man makes sense of the world around him through the active exercise of imagination. Therefore each man understands the world differently. I think the poem "Blanche McCarthy" conveys this idea. In the first line of the poem Steven's writes, "Look in the terrible mirror of the sky And not in this dead glass, which can reflect". Steven's refers to the world as a mirror beacuse man views the world with his own personal imagination so in order for man to understand the world he must look in to himself for his imagination.We must look to ourselves in order to find the answers of the world. The next line of the poem is only logical, he writes, "And not in this dead glass, which can reflect". Man looking inward for imagination and understanding the world is quite dangerous. There is a great fear of man not looking toward himself for the answers but rather looking at himself for the answers. If man looks at himself, like he looks in a mirror, for answers regarding the order of the world man becomes self-centered and arrogant. For this fear is why Stevens commands us not to look at ourselves as we look in a mirror, to see man's own reflection. Stevens wants man to look past the reflectin and to look in himself to find the answers in our own imagination.