Harvard and having spent his working life as an insurance executive, Stevens' was as far from poverty as he could be. The focus of this poem, the meditating mind, is interesting in this context. It can be seen as idealistic and focusing on the aesthetic, providing a somewhat sterile view of the world and refusing to include any palpable humanity. Interestingly, in the poem 'The Old Woman and the Statue' Stevens suggests that a destitute, old woman's presence soils the magnificence of a statue. Perhaps the 'blessed rage for order' refers to the contemporary focus on left wing politics, something with which the Republican Stevens hoped was a 'rage' or a fashion. Perhaps it refers to his unhappiness with what had happened. Perhaps this word may refer to Stevens' passionate need to perfect the way a person may meditate on, and therefore practice, their own thoughts and actions.

Despite Stevens' sympathy with right wing politics in the 1930s, he rejects extremism. He refers to Ramon Fernandez, who he suggested was 'not intended to be anyone at all' but who was a French critic and fascist. Stevens, in his desire for order, appears to be tauntingly critical of Fernandez and so the extremist categorising into good and bad, black or white. Rather we must remember that despite Stevens' privilege he was an artist and concerned with the layered meaning in life, both the aesthetic and the emotional, without rejecting on or the other. These features of our existence are nothing without the other, in the same way that the woman's song in the poem is nothing without an interlocutor.

In 'The Idea for Order' Stevens' references to nature are imbued with a sense of the contrast between beauty and terror. Yet everything is there for a reason; each element reliant on the next. The sea and the wind are irregular and varied, while being repetative and on some levels, predictable. The idea that there is 'order' in  nature suggests that our surroundings are stable; ever changing yet permanent. This stability provides the opportunity for individual interpretation so that art, writing and creativity can produce varied results yet each piece has its own merits.

Instead of suggesting that nature is random and disordered, Stevens implies that nature is honest, transparent and although each wave of the sea is different from the last, its stability provides him with a platform on which to analyse his ideas about what constitutes order, for him.

Unlike many of Stevens' other well-known poems, this one eschews his usual surreal and metaphorical language to descrube in fairly simple terms the experience of witnessing a singer's performance by the sea. Stevens refers to "we" several times, describing the sounds and emotions evoked by the singer's voice and affect. The poet also creates a persona, "Ramon Fernandez," who is questioned for insights on the thoughts the narrator is having about death, solitude and eternity (themes that recur throughout Stevens' poetry). The theme of solitude is also what prompts the creation of "Ramon Fernandez" and the narrator's need for validation of this shared experience. One critic, Jmes Longenbach, says that Stevens insisted Fernandez was a "caricature" but that he was actually a literary critic with controversial political views, and that this colors the poem's meaning. The last two stanzas seem to be asking for insights and continuing a conversation between the narrator and Fernandez:  

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,Why, when the singing ended and we turnedToward the town, tell why the glassy lights,The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,As the 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.

In asking Fernandez to explain why the lights of the town "ordered" the sea (created a visual illusion of "order" amid an atmosphere of chaos and wild nature), the narrator (Stevens) suggests it is the "maker's rage" that causes this, that "ourselves and our origins" are ideas which can be deeply pondered after such an emotional shared experience (the sight of the landscape after a singr's moving performance), even if no clear answers can be found.