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TOK Relevant Ideas in Poems | THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE





The first stanza of The Man with a Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens (1937)


The man bent over his guitar,
A shearman of sorts. The day was green. (Green is in contrast to blue, which may mean imagination in the poem)

They said, "You have a blue guitar, (Knowledge)
You do not play things as they are

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar  (Sense Perception)

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, (your gut) (Intuition/Faith)

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

What are some of the TOK relevant ideas conveyed in the exact?
- The first stanza of The Man with a Blue Guitar, "You have a blue guitar" - This quote means that everybody has the knowledge and things are changed upon sense perception. "Things" stated here can be described as knowledge which can be changed to sense perception. “You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are” is another example of a perception. The blue guitar seems to be different than a normal guitar. However, the poet Wallace Stevens perhaps refers to "A tune beyond us, yet ourselves" - Which he portrays as intuition(faith). 
He is required to express people beyond themselves because that is exactly the way they are. Feelings of people are captured by imagination which again becomes a part of their identity. This poem talks about the difference between perception and reality in gaining knowledge.

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