Today’s Poem: The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Eventually, every bed is cold
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
by Wallace Stevens
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.
When Poems Ancient and Modern offered William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” last week, we struggled against the 20th-century reading of the poem as all about sex. With Today’s Poem, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” we switch sides — to argue that the 1922 poem by Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) is actually about sex. Well, mostly. Sex and death. The heat of sensuous life and the cold of death, and since death is the one end of it, only the cold has weight and substance: “Let be be finale of seem,” as Stevens writes. “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”
Possibly referencing the poet’s experiences on a visit to Cuba, the first stanza presents a party, replete with sensual images of ice cream being whipped up in a kitchen. The second stanza reveals that the party is a wake in a poor woman’s apartment, her cheap wood dresser opened to find the sheet with which to cover her corpse — “how cold she is, and dumb” — from which, in a cruel detail, her callused feet protrude. Both stanzas end with a rhyme and the same conclusion: “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.” The only thing that’s real is cold, a sign of life in a cup of ice cream and a sign of death in a corpse.
This is just right! I used to love giving this poem to my students and asking them to wrestle with it. Upon a first reading, it seems incomprehensible, but it makes more sense once you find an entry point.
Your analysis gives much to think about. I never understood this poem and just thought it sounded very cool (cool as ice cream). But, a wake. The heat of sensuous life and the cold of death, the poor woman's corpse in the back room. I think the subject is also appearance vs. reality, even God. If not for the line, "Let be be finale of seem," I would take it as a poem of despair. But even sex and death may "seem" to have finality, and the emperor of ice-cream (the emperor of "seem"?) is declared the only emperor. In "Let be be finale of seem," I want to think that the poet is begging for being itself to somehow be revealed, that which is beyond or behind appearances. Let be (to be, being) be the finale, or end, of what "seems," (i.e. the empirical, observation of the scene). Then the mysterious second request: "Let the lamp affix its beam." Is that lamp/light/God? True emperor of ice-cream is God, being itself, finale of "seem"?