Student Question
What literary devices are used in "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Wallace Stevens?
Quick answer:
In "The Idea of Order at Key West," Wallace Stevens employs various literary devices such as irregular rhythm and rhyme to explore themes of order and language. Apostrophe, rhetorical questions, and aporia are used to engage with metacognition, questioning how language shapes reality. The poem's narrative contrasts a woman's intentional song with the natural sounds of the sea, highlighting the cyclical relationship between human perception and the natural world, and the quest for truth through language.
Wallace Stevens' poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" using many different
literary devices, including devices of sound and devices of thought.
For sound, Stevens begins the poem in a regular rhythm, iambic pentameter, and
then the poetic rhythm becomes irregular as the poet puzzles over the problem
of order in language, and then, as order is restored in the epiphany, the poem
returns to a regular meter. Rhyme is also used, but it is somewhat
irregular.
Stevens uses several figures of speech, the most dramatic being apostrophe, or
direct address, to the mysterious "Ramon." He also uses the figure of aporia,
and several rhetorical questions.
What is the theme of Wallace Stevens' poem "The Idea of Order at Key West"?
Stevens' long poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" is, indeed, complex. The answer provided above does a good job to refine the poem to its primary fixations. We can add also that Stevens was interested in exploring metacognition - thinking about...
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thinking - and specifically, he was interested in exploring the way that language both limits and creates our view of the world.
Reality is shaped by language, yet language is shaped by reality. The relationship is mutual and cyclical. Crucially, this relationship mimics the relationship between Man and the Universe. (We can use any terms here which are expressive of the individual's relationship to the world into which he/she is born.)
There is a question of truth within this cycle: How can we capture any truth in a language that is purely descriptive? Can we say that this singer sings the truth if it is only a truth of language, of created words and sounds?
Is the song and its power only an external reality? Or does the power of the song lie in one’s ability to transform it into something personal?
Wallace Stevens' poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" is extremely complex, and critics have written a great deal about the poem without ever achieving a definitive interpretation. The basic narrative is of a woman walking by the sea and singing. One recurring theme is that the woman's song is intentional and has a certain order, as does all human language, including, of course, Stevens' poem itself. The sea also makes beautiful sounds, though. Thus we cannot say that beauty of sound, in poetry or song, is due exclusively to human intention at the point of creation. However, it may be that the "rage for order" of the human narrator makes over a non-ordered sound of the sea into something ordered like human song. Thus the theme is the relationship between beauty and order.
What is the tone of Wallace Stevens' poem "The Idea of Order at Key West"?
Wallace Stevens' poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" begins with a cool meditative tone, with the narrator observing the woman walking and singing by the see. As the narrator reflects about the relationship between the song and the sound of the sea, and the human and the natural, the poem becomes deeply reflective and thoughtful. By the middle of the poem, the speaker almost sounds frustrated with an inability to work out the problematics of language that were encountered in the initial stanza. As the narrator turns away from the woman and the sea and returns to civilization there is a moment of ecstatic epiphany.