"Negation" is a poem from Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

's first book
of poetry, Harmonium

Harmonium (poetry collection)

Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...

. It
was first published in 1918, so it is in the public
domain.

Negation  Hi! The creator too is blind,  Struggling toward his harmonious whole,  Rejecting intermediate parts,  Horrors and falsities and wrongs;  Incapable master of all force,  Too vague idealist, overwhelmed  By an afflatus that persists.  For this, then, we endure brief lives,  The evanescent symmetries  From that meticulous potter's thumb.

This poem was Section VII of the poem—sequence "Lettres d'un Soldat"
(1918). It was extracted as "Negation" for inclusion in the second
edition of Harmonium. It may reflect Stevens's reading of
Thus Spake Zarathustra, according to Bates. The poem's image of God as
bungling potter recalls Zarathustra's dialogue with the last pope, in
which God is similarly characterized.

Another Harmonium poem that clearly reflects Stevens's reading of Nietzsche
is "The Surprises of the Superhuman

The Surprises of the Superhuman

"The Surprises of the Superhuman" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first bookof poetry, Harmonium. Itwas first published in 1918, so it is in the publicdomain.This poem was Section V of the poem-sequence "Lettres d'un Soldat"...

", which was also extracted from
"Lettres d'un Soldat" for inclusion in the second edition.

The poem is notable for its arch wit and the anti-poetical

Anti-poetry

Anti-poetry is an art movement that attempts to break away from the normal conventions of poetry. Early proponents of anti-poetry include Nicanor Parra....

 salutation, "Hi!",
rather than as a solution to the problem of evil

Problem of evil

In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...

.