Wallace Stevens -- the Idea

wallace Stevens -- the Idea of Order at Key West

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a controversial American poet, although more for his personal behaviour than for his work. At the age of 56, Stevens encountered Robert Frost in Key West, Florida and reportedly argued vociferously with Frost while extremely intoxicated according to Frost. Stevens also was reported to have broken his hand punching Earnest Hemingway around the same time and was struck back by Hemingway. Stevens also encountered Frost again several years later and again precipitated another heated argument with him.

Stevens was brilliant academically and attended both Harvard University and New York Law School. After graduation, Stevens worked in New York City as a lawyer before later moving to Connecticut A lifelong Protestant, Stevens converted to Catholicism shortly before his death while already suffering from the stomach cancer that would take his life later that same year. This was also a controversial topic and provoked the Protestant community; in fact, Stevens' own daughter adamantly disputed the accounts of the chaplain of St. Francis Hospital where the conversion occurred claiming it never happened at all.

Stevens discovered Key West early in his adult life and returned there often thereafter. He described the coastal community as a "paradise" in letters to his wife and much of his most acclaimed work was inspired by Key West, including Harmonium and The Idea of Order at Key West. Stevens' other famous works included Anecdote of the Jar, The Emperor of Ice Cream, Sunday Morning, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and The Disillusionment of Ten O'clock.

The Idea of Order at Key West is a poem obviously inspired by Stevens' favorite place on earth, Key West, Florida. It is about a man walking along the Key West beach who hears a woman singing a beautiful song:

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

[emphasis supplied]

A difficult poem to understand, it seems to suggest that the listener is unable to determine whether the song comes from the mind of the woman or from the beauty of the ocean merely relayed by the singer. That point-of-view is later contradicted by a passage that suggests that the song is indeed a product of the singer's mind and not the ocean:

For she was the maker of the song she sang.

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew

It was the spirit that we sought and knew

That we should ask this often as she sang.

[emphasis supplied]

It has often been suggested that The Idea of order at Key West is an early example of Stevens' belief (expressed in many later works) that the line between reality and the imaginary is blurred and that it is sometimes impossible to distinguish cause from effect and that interpreting the truth is sometimes difficult if not impossible. In some respects, that concept is exemplified by this particular work by virtue of the difficulty of understanding the entire poem. Likewise, the apparent contradictions and ambiguities in the work seem to be deliberate attempts to illustrate those ideas.

JOHN STEINBECK -- THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was a prolific American writer who authored more than two dozen novels, non-fiction books, and books of short stories. Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California during the period when that region was still very much a frontier town in the so-called American Wild West. His interest I reading was fuelled by his mother, a former school teacher, but his earliest writing attempts were extremely unsuccessful. He attended Stanford University but failed to graduate and worked primarily as a migrant field worker and handyman, partially supported in his continued writing efforts by his father.

Steinbeck travelled extensively including an ocean voyage during which he collected biological specimens and later writing The Log from the Sea of Cortez about that journey. Steinbeck also travelled to the Soviet Union and produced A Russian Journal about that trip, collaborating with the famous photographer Robert Capa who illustrated the book with his photographs. Shortly before his death, Steinbeck also travelled to Israel (then Palestine) to see the kibbutz established more than a century earlier near Tel Aviv and also the site of his grandfather's killing by militant Arabs.

Steinbeck's works illustrate the harshness of human life that he witnessed and experienced as a young man working manual labor as well as the dichotomy of good and evil in humanity. That concept was exemplified by his famous book Of Mice and Men in which the protagonist, Lenny, had a gentle heart but physical strength beyond his ability to control or keep from doing evil. Some of Steinbeck's other literary works such as The Grapes of Wrath representing what he believed were the pitfalls of capitalism. Together with his travels to the Soviet Union, this exposed Steinbeck to intense political criticism.

Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums is a short story about Elisa and Henry Allen, a couple living in a small rural home in Steinbeck's own hometown of Salinas, California. Henry is a businessman and Elisa works at home caring for the house and her garden that she cherishes. Elisa is approached by a travelling handyman who tries to solicit her for work sharpening scissors or fixing pots and she politely refuses until he begins complimenting her on her chrysanthemums. He mentions that he had been looking for some chrysanthemum seeds for one of his other customers and Elisa graciously offers to fix him a bowl of dirt with carefully potted chrysanthemums instead. She carefully prepares the flowers and provides detailed instructions for their care and in the process changes her mind about giving him some work and allows him to do some small repairs that she really could have done without his help.

It is thought that the flowers in her garden represent Elisa's unfulfilled sexuality and/or her unhappiness over being childless and treating her flowers like children. Her husband treats her nicely but not as a feminine woman and it seems that she is continually hurt by his comments complimenting her utility instead of her femininity or sexuality. In response to her most beautiful flowers, Henry only says "I wish you'd work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big" which is a metaphor for her desire to be recognized and appreciated as a woman and his ignorance of that desire.

After she spends time carefully primping to look attractive before they go out, for example, Henry tells her "You look strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a watermelon" which she takes as an insult instead of as a compliment the way it was meant. Driving with her husband that evening, she spots the handyman's wagon and sees that he had tossed her chrysanthemums out on the road and is devastated by the realization that he never had any interest in them but was merely trying to flatter her to get her business.

RICHARD WRIGHT -- A FIVE DOLLAR FIGHT (BLACK BOY)

Richard Wright (1908-1960) was an African-American writer born in Mississippi, the grandson of a slave. He lived in a time and place (the deep South during the Jim Crowe Law period) where American blacks were technically free but still exploited and abused by much of white society. Wright experienced a difficult childhood because he hated his father for abandoning his wife and his children when he was unable to support them.

Wright's mother supported the family as a school teacher but when she fell ill, Wright was placed in an orphanage until she recovered. The family subsequently moved to Arkansas where they lived with relatives until Wright's uncle was murdered by white racists. After the family returned to live in Mississippi, Wright's mother again fell ill and Wright had the opportunity to live with his father but refused because he had no respect for the man and chose instead to live with other relatives closer to his ailing mother.

Wright had an extremely difficult time living with his relatives, primarily because of their religious fanaticism and the strict rules that they placed on his freedoms. In particular, his aunt condemned him for his admitted lack of religious beliefs and the emotional strains this caused the young man brought him nearly to the verge of a mental breakdown. Wright's literary works dealt mainly with issues of race and poverty and expressed much of the rightful anger that resulted from the typical experiences of African-Americans in the early 20th century United States. In the decade of the civil rights era following his death, many blacks drew inspiration from Wright's literary descriptions of the injustice experienced by blacks in the United States long after the end of American slavery.

One of Wright's major works was Black Boy and one of the most poignant sections of that book was Chapter 12 in which Wright described the experiences of two southern black boys exploited by the "five dollar fight." Working for an optician in Memphis, Tennessee, the protagonist (Richard) hopes that his experiences with white people in Memphis will be better than in the small town of Jackson, Mississippi "The people of Memphis had an air of relative urbanity that took some of the sharpness off the attitude of whites toward Negroes & #8230;"

However, Richard finds that white people are just as exploitative and abusive of blacks in the big city as in small towns. Some of the white men where Richard works pay another black boy a quarter at a time to let them kick him in his rear end and even when white men seem to be nice to Richard, it is somewhat obvious to him that they are patronizing him for their own amusement. Other times, they go out of their way to use him and other blacks like him for their own amusement, such as when Mr. Olin tells Richard of another young black boy named Harrison who hates him because he (Richard) supposedly insulted him and wants to kill him. The men continue frightening Richard for several days and advise him to protect himself against Harrison with a knife.

Richard eventually confronts Harrison at which point they both realize that Mr. Olin and his cronies have been telling Harrison the same thing about Richard for their amusement and also because they want to see the two boys fight each other. When the men offer the boys five dollars to fight each other, Richard is reluctant but Harrison convinces him to do it for the money. They earn the money fighting each other but the experience leaves both boys ashamed of allowing themselves to be exploited and deeply resentful of white society.

RALPH ELLISON -- BATTLE ROYAL

Ralph Waldo Ellison was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson by his father who died when Ellison was only three years old. Only much later did Ellison find out that his father had expressed the hope that his son would become a writer or a poet. Like Richard Wright, Ellison wrote extensively about white racism in its various forms in different parts of the country. During World War II, Ellison served in the merchant marine braving German U-boat infested waters in the effort to keep essential war supplies moving between the U.S. And Britain.

It was Wright who actually encouraged Ellison to pursue fiction writing and the two writers maintained a long friendship. Ellison was a scholar in his own right who lectured in Europe and later taught Russian and American literature at Bard College, Rutgers University, and Yale University after returning to the United States. Also much like the works of Wright, those of Ellison were embraced by the civil rights movement of the 1960s.