Wallace Stevens explores the perception of a wintery January scene in his poem "The Snow Man." The poem takes place in the space of five unrhymed stanzas, three lines each, and is contained in a single, deceptively simple sentence. Within this sentence, semicolons divide the spectator's actions as the speaker delves into the needs of the scenario. Rather than what is perceived, it is the act of perception that the poem focuses on, and passive verbs predominantly characterize this central action, imposing conditions on the viewer and on the winter scene that is seen. In this way, the poem deals with the unification of time and distance, organizing a single instance of perception into multiple actions as the viewer's mind and body are absorbed in the sight of winter. In the first stanza, the speaker establishes an oddly thoughtful description. of those who see the frozen scenery of midwinter. Since the first word of the poem is “One,” the notion of singularity is immediately established. In this one-sentence poem, the speaker describes a single moment of time and space, yet this description occurs over the course of five stanzas. By choosing “One,” as opposed to “you,” “a person,” or another alternative, the speaker implants the concept of unity in the first moment of the poem, which as a whole describes only one moment in time. The first word thus becomes metonymic, but also a place of convergence between action and space, as "one" is contingent. He or she “must have a winter mind” to perceive the symptoms of winter, which are “the frost and the branches / Of the pines encrusted with snow.” By indicating a condition to perception, the action is both abstracted and made exclusive. “One” i…… half of the paper…… winter” of the first line of the poem, further underlining that the instance of perception finds itself absorbed by what is perceived. The spectator's body becomes the same as the scenario: "nothing in itself", he "sees / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is". The second line of this final stanza groups the act of seeing with the identity of nothingness, reminding the reader that perception depends on the absence of thought. The “winter mind” brings nothing external, such as misery, into the scene, seeing “nothing that is not there.” Absence is distinctly unified with presence in the idea of ​​“nothing that is.” This final line is written in abstract language that provides us with no sensory imagery. The simplicity of the language echoes the simplicity of pure perception that the speaker deems so necessary to understand the winter scene.