The Rhetoric of Plain Fact: Stevens’ “No Possum, No Sop, No Taters”

While the previous chapter provides a wide gloss of varying applications of Molecular Sememics for literary criticism, this chapter focusses specifically on the ontological connections between language and perception unearthed in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. By implicitly utilizing his theory of Molecular Sememics, Caldwell aims to show that Stevens’ concern with poems that truly capture the phenomenology of experience offers a perfect example of the way our linguistic world can shape our understanding of our perceptual world. For Stevens’ use of various rhetorical devices helps to create a poem that feels as real as the experience it is itself about, highlighting an underlying tenet of Molecular Sememics: we have the power to name our experiences, and by so doing, create the sense and meaning these experiences have for us.