Wallace Stevens, the Emperor of Smarty Pants

Poetry Foundation had a podcast dedicated to deciphering just one of Wallace Stevens poems, "The Idea of Order at Key West." People have different ideas about having a poem explained to them but I like it, particularly in Stevens' case because his poetry is lovely (look at some of these fragments: "fragrant portals", "tragic-gestured sea",  "meaningless plungings of water and wind.") but not the most accessible stuff in the world. All of this is fitting for the poet that Harold Bloom called "the best and most representative American poet of our time."

I'm trying to say that if Harold Bloom digs him, I probably won't understand it.

Jennifer Michael Hecht (whose book Doubt is buried somewhere on my to-read list), joined Curtis Fox to explain this poem and it was actually fantastic. First the poem, then some of her observations that I scribbled down.

The Idea of Order at Key West
by Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard. Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

The universe is real but the mind of art is real too. Between these poles, how is man-so small in the universe-to discern what is real and what isn't? And while the universe is big and vast, it is the mind that creates the moment.

Neither the woman nor the sea are illusions. Neither made the other and yet it is the listener's experience of hearing the woman sing that colors his perception of this moment at the seashore. What is the world? What is real when so many perspectives are shaped by thought, chance and circumstance?  One day the woman and listener will be gone, later on so too the trees and much later the ocean. So did it really happen? (Hecht says she gets this because it's the Kilgore Trout in her. You have to read literature to get literature.)

"For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea was merely a place by which she walked to sing" can be read as an expression of transcendentalist philosophy. The human mind and creative impulse was greater than nature. Her singing forges his experience of the sea.

When you look at the ocean at night, it's black. The lights on the boats give it order. Why do we need as humans need order (and art) and the universe doesn't? We demarcate our lives like the lights do on the ocean.

Bishop Berkeley once declared, in a nutshell, that the world is composed by our imagination. The philsophy is called immaterialism. Samuel Johnson famously kicked a rock and said "Thus I do refute it." This poem plays with those ideas.

Who the heck is Ramon? Apparently, Stevens just wanted a Hispanic name to plug in there. 

This is maybe the best explication of a poem I've ever heard or read. I get it. Well, kind of.