Poetry: Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

Born in Pennsylvania, Wallace Stevens was educated at Harvard College and New York University Law School. He practiced law in New York City from 1904 to 1916, a time of great artistic and poetic activity there. On moving to Hartford, Connecticut, to become an insurance executive in 1916, he continued writing poetry. His life is remarkable for its compartmentalisation: His associates in the insurance company did not know that he was a major poet.

In private he continued to develop extremely complex ideas of aesthetic order throughout his life in aptly named books such as Harmonium (enlarged edition 1931), Ideas of Order (1935), and Parts of the World (1942). Some of his best known poems are "Sunday Morning", "Peter Quince at the Clavier", "The Emperoro of Ice-Cream", "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", and "The Idea of Order at Key West".

Poetry: The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens

Stevens was a seeming contradiction: an insurance executive who was also one of the most challenging poets of his time. Central to his work is a faith in the redemptive power of the imagination, as well as the conviction that ultimately "Poetry is the subject of the poem".

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.