Wallace Stevens: Poems Lesson Plan

Who do you think is the "they" in "The Man with the Blue Guitar" is? What about the "I?"

"The Man with the Blue Guitar" can be confusing because it switches from third to first person, and also uses various unattributed pronouns throughout. In the first section, it is "they" who remark to the man playing the guitar that he "does not play things as they are" (4). Here we understand "they" to be the audience. In the next section, the guitar player himself is the "I" who speaks, and this continues throughout the poem, ending with the speaker directly addressing the audience ("you") in later sections.

How do you think the structure of the poem corresponds to the...