FIGURES OF MIND IN THE POETRY OF W.B. YEATS AND WALLACE STEVENS By

This study examines representations of thinking and consciousness in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. In discussing the processes ofthinking in poetry, I have borrowed Ian Fletcher's term "noetics " which "names the field and the precise activity occurring when the poet introduces thought as a discriminable dimension ofthe form and meaning ofthe poem " (3-4). I have further sub-divided Fletcher's term into "noetics of form " and "noetics offigure " the first exploring the dominant modes ofthinking which the poems imitate, the latter examining the images which are consistently used to represent consciousness and/or processes ofthinking. In many ways, this study takes as its premise Stevens ' theory ofthe poetic imagination as either ''marginal " or "central. " I explore this theory ofpoetry in relation to a noetics ofform and figure in the poetry of the "marginal" thinking Yeats and the "central "-thinking Stevens in order to consider the idea of consciousness as a container and ofpoetry as a process ofcontainment. By understanding consciousness as a container ofthinking, we come to see that human consciousness-and our ability to think metaphorically-virtually creates reality