Sunday Morning

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Sunday Morning” consists of eight sections of 15 lines each. Each 15-line section is made up of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, or blank verse. The form of the poem recalls a sonnet cycle, where a series of sonnets feed one into the other. However, a sonnet is one line shorter than the sections (14 lines in total), traditionally rhymes, and (if it is an English sonnet) has its final two lines (known as the couplet) function somewhat differently than the preceding 12 lines.

Despite exhibiting several similarities—the iambic pentameter lines, the centrality of argument, and only going one line over the traditional length—Stevens’s sections do not seem to be in dialogue with the traditional sonnet form. In fact, even their relationship to meter is highly relaxed. While the poem’s first line has the correct number of feet (metrical units) and stressed syllables for pentameter, it is too irregular to be considered iambic. Because this line introduces the reader to the rhythm of the poem, the text initially seems composed of irregularly metrical free verse. Just as the narrative of the poem begins with a relaxed, low-stakes scene, so does the meter. The first rigidly iambic line is also the line that introduces the heavier concepts in the poem. After the metrically relaxed lines detailing “Coffee and oranges” (Line 2), the breakfast gives way to “the holy hush of ancient sacrifice” (Line 5), a pristine example of iambic pentameter. In this way, the rigidity of the line’s form reinforces the gravitas of its content. As the poem proceeds, the meter maintains its more formal rigidity, and so continues to elevate the rhetoric of the poem’s argumentation.

Free Indirect Discourse

Free indirect discourse is a literary technique where the divisions between third-person narration and first-person dialogue—between author and character—are blurred. The term encompasses several variations under its umbrella, referring both to instances where the narration appears to be taken over by the voice of the character and those where a character’s voice has been hijacked by the authorial voice. In “Sunday Morning,” Stevens employs a few versions of this technique.

The second section of the poem begins with a narratorial question, “Why should she give her bounty to the dead?” (Line 16). The entirety of the stanza continues to embody this voice, posing seemingly rhetorical questions that become increasingly strained as merely expressions of an objective third-person narrator. The stanza asks, “Shall she not find in comforts of the sun” (Line 19), “Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?” (Line 22). The voice eventually declares, “Divinity must live within herself” (Line 23), as if it were reasoning in real time. The line of reasoning—the questioning, bargaining with oneself, and final arrival at a conclusion—appears to describe a mind in the process of grappling with these issues and not a detached voice of a poem expressing arguments already crafted in advance. In this way, the woman’s own thoughts are mirrored by (and merged into) the voice of the speaker, complicating the poem’s relationship to these struggles. Does the reader understand them as existing in a narrative that the poet merely reports, or is Stevens also struggling through and with the woman?

While the strange relationship between speaker and character seems to have codified itself in the second stanza, the poem again upsets its own balance by its fourth and fifth sections. Here, the woman verbalizes questions despite being alone in her breakfasting. First, she asks “where, then, is paradise?” (Line 50), before the poem’s speaker responds with its answer. The woman then asks a follow-up question, implying that she heard and understood the poem’s third person narration: “But in contentment I still feel / The need of some imperishable bliss” [emphasis added] (Lines 61-62). Stevens has once again destabilized the distance between persona, character, speaker, and poet—it now seems as if the poem’s central character can dialogue back and forth with the narratorial voice of the poem. Where is the poet located in this dialogue? Does the poet embody the narratorial voice, or does he sit behind both this voice and the woman’s, puppeteering a dialogue? By the end of the poem, the woman “hears […] / A voice” (Lines 106-107), introducing yet another element to the conversation. All this refuses to let the reader contextualize the debate that infuses the poem in any comfortable way, locating the poet's point of view and fixing it in place. This destabilization, accomplished through free indirect discourse, involves the reader more personally in the poem’s concerns than any fixed style could.

Alliteration

As with its use of traditional meter, the poem employs alliteration to elevate its language and lend solemnness to its description of religious concepts. The first notable appearance of repeated sounds is also the first line that employs rigid iambic pentameter and introduces the theme of transcendence: “The holy hush” (Line 5). However, this practice continues as the discussion of religion continues. All the following are examples of Stevens’s continual use of alliteration in the poem, which employs the device for seriousness and sonic unity: “Winding across wide water, without sound” (Line 11); “balm or beauty” (Line 21); “Magnificent, would move among” (Line 35); “to pile new plums and pears / On disregarded plate” (Lines 73-74); “burning bosom” (Line 89); and “Downward to darkness” (Line 120). As the poem dips into more traditional or Romantic literary strategies to evoke an older mode of thinking about religion and contribute to its sense of dialogue with a literary and intellectual tradition, alliteration helps cement this comparison.