‘Study of Two Pears’ - poem

Study of Two Pears

I 

Opusculum paedagogum. 

The pears are not viols, 

Nudes or bottles. 

They resemble nothing else. 

II 

They are yellow forms 

Composed of curves 

Bulging toward the base. 

They are touched red. 

III 

They are not flat surfaces 

Having curved outlines. 

They are round 

Tapering toward the top. 

IV 

In the way they are modelled 

There are bits of blue. 

A hard dry leaf hangs 

From the stem. 

V 

The yellow glistens. 

It glistens with various yellows, 

Citrons, oranges and greens 

Flowering over the skin. 

VI 

The shadows of the pears 

Are blobs on the green cloth. 

The pears are not seen 

As the observer wills.

 

Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)*

*Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pensylvania and educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and then spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

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