American Poets in the Kabir Karakhana

It may come as a surprise to many professors of English literature (though not, I reckon, to the American poet Robert Bly), that there is a significant American presence in the Kabir Karakhana. It is a remarkably central presence, as the poets involved belong to the Emersonian line. On this winter's day, we recall perhaps the strongest poet (after Whitman) in that line: Wallace Stevens.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

("The Snow Man" from Harmonium).