Re-Analysis of "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

 Poem Found Here: "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

Stevens' title are great.  "The Emperor of Ice Cream" comes to mind.  I think he made the title, "The Snow Man" to be associated with joy and holiday cheer and for the poem to systematically break down those meanings into a moment of nothingness.

"One must have a mind of winter" is a line that will be defined as we go further down the tercets.  The initial way to have the "mind of winter" is 

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,

Note how the poem starts off with strong imagery of "frost and bough / of pine-trees with snow" and with the addition of time asks the reader to consider the whole process of winter: of how snow falls to encrust the trees and create ice on junipers.  The speaker is asking the reader to observe in which the next lines, "Of the January sun; and not to think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind," asks the reader to observe without emotion and judgment on the scenery.

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  

The anaphora of "same" adds a sense of collectiveness in the poem.  The same wind, and the same place being observed by the same people.  Nature doesn't have a bias.  When it snows, it snows.  

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

I think the repetition of listener (person) and listen (action) draws attention back to the idea of "The Snow Man."  As an actual person who takes in and observes to gain nothing.  I feel the nothing is a "zen" type of nothing -- where the consideration of everything else that will matter will be gone, and right now, in this instant, you, the reader is "nothing himself" experiencing the nothingness of emotion or memory and just experiencing the nothing. 

P.S.  
As I was going to post this and found out that I already did an analysis of this poem back in 2012.  Analysis of "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens and I didn't realize it.  I know I read this poem many times, but it's been nine years since I revisited this poem for analysis.  Looking back at how I analyzed poems before and I noticed how different I am now.  

I wonder which one is better?  The past analysis has an anti-cannon feel to it.  I think this one is looking at the poem without that bias so much anymore, but lacks the same dumb passion I had years ago.  I miss you Kevin McGee, the unknown, the nothing that is.