Ive read that in the Southern states 100 years ago ice cream was traditional at working class wakes. So the presence of death in the first stanza would have been more apparent when the poem was written. One of my favourite poems I almost know it by heart. Only the abstraction of "let be be finale of seem" doesn't quite work for me among all the vivid images. Though triumphantly trumped by the stanza's final line.
My colleague's significant other was Peter Brazeau who published an oral biography of Wallace. Peter even borrowed my tape recorder to use in Cuba. His daughter was Holly. She often visited Peter and Jim in Manchester, CT, so I spent several hours with her at dinners. We celebrated Peter's book publishing with a dinner I helped Jim prepare. Holly took out a teaspoon and walked to the huge silver bowl, chocolate mousse, for a sample. Jim held one end of the spoon and Holly the other as he stopped her!.
Thank you for this: at last I feel I have a way into this poem which for years has puzzled me even to the point of being irritated by it. His Sunday Morning, his Key West and his Monocle poems are favourites of mine to which I return and reread with a sense of recognition. Ice-Cream might now also come into focus for me.
What a great poem. And great analysis. I think the easiest way in is via the Hamlet allusion. "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end."
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"?
The little I know about Stevens I got lazily, at second-hand and off-the-shelf. Here's one of his pertinent statements, from "The Man with the Blue Guitar":
The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry
Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,
Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar.
Reality is not directly accessible to us; what seems, as apprehended by our imagination, is what is. Maybe that's what he thought.
That appears to be so, or maybe resignation (probably a Christian virtue he did not countenance). "Even in the chattering" seems to mean "Even if no more than in the chattering...."
Ive read that in the Southern states 100 years ago ice cream was traditional at working class wakes. So the presence of death in the first stanza would have been more apparent when the poem was written. One of my favourite poems I almost know it by heart. Only the abstraction of "let be be finale of seem" doesn't quite work for me among all the vivid images. Though triumphantly trumped by the stanza's final line.
Stevens was his own man.
My colleague's significant other was Peter Brazeau who published an oral biography of Wallace. Peter even borrowed my tape recorder to use in Cuba. His daughter was Holly. She often visited Peter and Jim in Manchester, CT, so I spent several hours with her at dinners. We celebrated Peter's book publishing with a dinner I helped Jim prepare. Holly took out a teaspoon and walked to the huge silver bowl, chocolate mousse, for a sample. Jim held one end of the spoon and Holly the other as he stopped her!.
Stevens was a man of mystery.
Those were the days!
Thank you for this: at last I feel I have a way into this poem which for years has puzzled me even to the point of being irritated by it. His Sunday Morning, his Key West and his Monocle poems are favourites of mine to which I return and reread with a sense of recognition. Ice-Cream might now also come into focus for me.
What a great poem. And great analysis. I think the easiest way in is via the Hamlet allusion. "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end."
I think a poem like this is like a piece of music: it's not about anything but itself.
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"?
The analysis also opened the poem for me.
The little I know about Stevens I got lazily, at second-hand and off-the-shelf. Here's one of his pertinent statements, from "The Man with the Blue Guitar":
The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry
Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,
Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar.
Reality is not directly accessible to us; what seems, as apprehended by our imagination, is what is. Maybe that's what he thought.
Perhaps the poet is being flippant? Poetry replaces "empty heaven and its hymns" but we end in the chattering of a guitar.
That appears to be so, or maybe resignation (probably a Christian virtue he did not countenance). "Even in the chattering" seems to mean "Even if no more than in the chattering...."