The poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice.
This is the opening sentence of the poem, a sentence fragment and the first of many declarative definitions of "modern poetry." The core sense is that poetry must help the mind find what it needs, or mirror that search in some way. "What will suffice" is a vague phrase, but here it functions in its broadest possible sense: the mind must find whatever will sustain it, whatever will be enough—enough to live, to thrive, to exist.
It has not always had / To find: the scene was set; it repeated what / Was in the script.
In this sentence the poem's speaker reflects on what poetry was like before Modernism, before modernity itself turned established systems of belief on their heads, leaving poets without a sure guide for how to pen verses in a world capable of mass warfare, from mustard gas to atomic bombs. Stevens' view here is a somewhat nostalgic one: in the previous eras, it was easier to create poems, because all a writer had to do was follow a "script," that script being established conventions of what was 'good writing'—probably, strict forms and a set array of topics including nature, love, and God.
Then the theatre was changed / To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
This sentence reflects the change that poetry experienced in Modernism. In typical Stevens style, poetry is conflated with another art form, theater (see also the singing woman in "The Idea of Order at Key West"). The use of the word "souvenir" is particularly crucial: we can remember the past legacy of poetry, but a souvenir is something that has passed out of most practical functionality, aside from its value as a keepsake or memory.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. / It has to face the men of the time and to meet / The women of the time.
These lines begin a long series of anaphora: sentences beginning with "It has to," describing the duties of modern poetry. These lines resonate with Ezra Pound's famous slogan, "Make it new," in that poetry must be an evolving and "living" art form to change along with the world around with it, and with the language or "speech" of modern times. The poet also has to be open to taking inspiration from everyday people and society. In this sense, the passage echoes the speaker of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," who chastises the "thin men of Haddam" for only writing about imaginary birds and ignoring the women around them.
It has to think about war / And it has to find what will suffice.
This sentence is the poem's most straightforward reference to its historical moment: 1942, in the midst of World War II, and in the shadow of the recent World War I, itself the original catalyst for much of literary Modernism. In the plainest terms, Stevens writes that, no matter how poets choose to process war in their work, poetry cannot turn away from these terrible things. The repetition of the earlier phrase "find what will suffice" bluntly re-emphasizes the necessity that poetry must be an aid for the human mind to find meaning in a chaotic world.
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, / Exactly, that which it wants to hear
This passage, in which a modern poem is personified as an actor, describes the necessity that poetry must speak to its listeners' deepest and most personal minds. The phrase "delicatest ear" is particularly interesting: delicate simultaneously evokes intimacy and vulnerability, suggesting that poetry can affect parts of people that few other things can reach, where people's emotions are most raw and sensitive—hence the importance of (at least sometimes) telling the listener exactly what they "[want] to hear."
...an invisible audience listens, / Not to the play, but to itself, expressed / In an emotion as of two people, as of two / Emotions becoming one
The "invisible audience" here is anyone who might read modern poetry: invisible probably because the poet should not be concerned primarily with who their audience is while writing, but simply know that the audience will exist. Counterintuitively, Stevens says that the audience will listen "Not to the play" (or poem), "but to itself," suggesting that poetry gives people the power first and foremost to listen to and understand themselves. The following phrases depict emotional unity, a reconciliation of two people and their disparate emotions as a result of the poetry.
The actor is a metaphysician in the dark
Here, as elsewhere, the "actor" is actually the poem or poet—or, more broadly, the artist in general. The image of a "metaphysician in the dark" is as abstract as it is evocative, and showcases the paradoxical importance of poetry. When things are literally dark, one might call an electrician before a metaphysician (someone who studies being, knowledge, and similar 'big questions'). However, in the metaphorically dark world that Modernism sought to confront and make sense of, it is more important than ever for poets to engage with huge philosophical questions as Stevens constantly does: how do we create meaning and perceive beauty, and how do we find truth in the world?
...twanging a wiry string that gives / Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses...
This description of the 'music' of modern poetry is striking in its ugliness, and also its power. The verb "twanging," especially on a "wiry string," does not sound like a particularly melodious sound, and yet this music has the power to give "sudden [rightness]" to the sounds that are played. Modern poetry, then, might be simple in form compared to older forms that employed complex rhyme and meter; but in its simplicity it is able to give a sharp clarity, a sense of "rightness," to the ideas it conveys to its audiences.
It must / Be the finding of a satisfaction
This sentence begins the final few lines of the poem, which settle on the practical purposes of poetry. The "finding of a satisfaction" is a way to rephrase "finding / What will suffice" from the poem's beginning: in either case, the duty of poetry is to give its audiences and their minds enough meaning, beauty, contentment, etc. to live.
