The Idea of Order at Key West (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Wallace Stevens
- First Published: 1934
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Poetry or poets, Singing or singers, Creative process, Imagination, Sea or seafaring life, Beaches or seashores, Voice
The Poem
“The Idea of Order at Key West” is a meditative poem in a relaxed iambic pentameter. Its fifty-six lines are broken into groups of uneven length that define the major points of its argument. The poem examines the interaction between imagination and reality through the figure of a woman who sings beside the sea and whose voice neither violates the reality of the sea nor simply reproduces it. She is the creator or “maker,” not merely a mirror. She puts the sea’s “dark voice” into human words, drawing it into the realm of human experience: “When she sang,...
[The entire page is 1371 words long]
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