Wallace Stevens’, The Palm at the End of the Mind, is a collection of his selected poems and a play. By examining the transformative nature of Stevens’ poetry, we can see that Stevens is arguing that poetry and art has the power to change and reveal the world.
Stevens describes in his poem, “Anecdote of the Jar”, the power human presence has in the world. The opening stanza establishes the jar in relation to the wilderness. Stevens writes, “I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.”. The introduction of this human artifact, the “jar”, to nature, creates a point of contrast and comparison between man and nature. The “jar” represents man, as it is a man-made creation, and the “hill”, the “slovenly wilderness”, represents nature. The wildness of nature, of the earth, is shown when compared or contrasted to the jar. Nature is “slovenly” and “wild”. The jar is “gray and bare”. Stevens describes how the placement of this jar upon the hill, transforms nature, how it transforms the world around it.
Stevens is essentially saying that the wilderness is the wilderness until we, humans, enter it. Human presence in the world, changes the natural world. Stevens describes that “The wilderness rose up to [the jar], And sprawled around, no longer wild.” The unnatural presence of the jar in this natural setting, makes the setting no longer natural. It is “no longer wild”. Nature is overcome and changed forever because of human presence. Stevens further demonstrates how humans take over everything by describing how the jar interacts with nature. The jar “took dominion everywhere”. The use of the word “dominion” describes the influencing power the jar has over its surrounding, over nature. As the jar in this poem is meant to represent humans, Stevens is revealing that humans have that power over nature, the power to change the natural world.
In “The Poems of Our Climate”, Stevens describes a bowl of flowers. Seemingly simple as his description of a jar upon hill, Stevens poetry is in fact revealing human truths of the world. The first stanza describes the bowl of flowers and its surroundings. It is a simple setting, perfect in nature, and Stevens uses it to establish humanity’s act of simplifying things. “Clear water in a brilliant bowl, Pink and white carnations. The light In the room more like a snowy air, Reflecting snow. […] Pink and white carnations – one desires So much more than that. The day itself Is simplified: a bowl of white, Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, With nothing more than the carnations there.”. It is a perfect and simple scene, however, Stevens description of the bowl, as “white” and “cold”, and surrounded by “snow”, implies a sense of numbness. It is a cold and unpassionate setting. When one simplifies life, making it easier to understand and easier to experience, a seemingly perfect life, one’s life becomes cold and unpassionate. A simple life strips one of passion and numbs them to experiences. The poet is saying that this perfect setting of “Pink and white carnations” is lacking in dimension. That humans need “So much more than that”. Stevens goes into detail that simplicity is not enough in the second stanza.
In the second stanza Stevens describes why humans would want to live a life of simplicity, “Say even that this complete simplicity Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed The evilly compounded, vital I And made it fresh in a world of white, A world of clear water, brilliant-edged”. Stevens is saying in these lines that living a simple life would make life itself simple. By virtue of simplification, the complexity, the difficulties and the stresses of life would be reduced as well. One could essentially be “Stripped […] of all one’s torments”, and that “The evilly compounded, vital I” could be made “fresh in a world of white”. The “I”, is human beings. Human beings are complex, they are “compounded”. Stevens is stating here that “evil” is “compounded”, that evil is complex, in other words that what is good is simple. So, if humans want to live good, they simply have to live simple lives.
A life of “complete simplicity” allows humans to be made “fresh” into “a world of white, A world of clear water, brilliant-edged”. A “world” with a simple setting similar to the “cold” “clear” and “white” setting of the “Pink and white carnations.” Stevens ends the second stanza by stating, however, that “Still one would want more, one would need more, More than a world of white and snowy scents.” He is stating that humans need more in life. That “complete simplicity” is not enough. That humans need complexity, they need passion, they need color. That these complex parts of life are also vital parts of life.
In the third and final stanza, Stevens describes what kind of complex life humans need. Humans need an “imperfect” life, he states that “The imperfect is our paradise”. We humans are imperfect, we are composed of “flawed words and stubborn sounds”. Since the “imperfect” is human, Stevens is saying that the perfect is inhuman. Perfection implies the end of things. There is no space for alterations, modifications, or deviations. Perfection no longer needs human interaction. The imperfect calls us in, it invites our participation, that there remains work to be done. Stevens states, “There would still remain the never-resting mind”. Humans never rest, are never satisfied, are always thinking. The imperfection suggests the idea of an active life, “Note that, in this bitterness, delight”. The “bitterness”, the imperfect, invites us to participate, to live active lives, to interact with the world, to be a living, thinking, human being. To be a thinking, living being, to be “imperfect”, “is so hot in us”. It is what makes us humans, what gives us the passion in our lives. Perfection, the simple perfect scene of a bowl of pink and white carnations in stanza I, removes humans from the world. Where perfection lies, humans do not. A complicated life is met with imperfections, but the opposite strips us of life.
Stevens’ poetry strives to point us outside his poems. Whether they be showing the relationship between humans and nature, the imperfect versus the perfect, Stevens’ poetry goes beyond to reveal to us the world. Stevens’ poetry also shows us the transformative power poetry and art has on the world. The poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West”, explores this idea of art transforming the world around you.
“The Idea of Order at Key West” (97) describes a poet and his friend listening to a woman sing. Listening to her singing has a profound effect on the poet and his friend. The poet states that “It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing.”. It is the woman’s “voice” that so affects the poet and his friend, her voice makes the “sky acutest”. Their view on the sky has changed. It has become more acute, more intense. The “vanishing” of the sky, which would be the horizon, implies that they don’t see the world as it once was. That line is blurred. Their outlook on the world has “vanished”.
In the sixth stanza after having listened to the woman, the poet asks his friend, “Ramon Fernandez, tell me why, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward 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.” With this stanza, Stevens is showing that art, the woman’s singing, has changed the world around them. The poet and Roman’s outlook on the world has changed after “the singing ended”. The poet describes how the “glassy lights” “in the fishing boats” suddenly “Mastered the night and portioned out the sea”. Night, the darkness, is suddenly “Mastered”. The “night”, the darkness of the world, is revealed, brought out against the light. Stevens further illustrates the power art has on people, the power it has to change the way they view the world, by how the “lights”, “portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles”. Their new view of the world around them, the lights see have changed. These lights now have different properties, they can “portion out the sea”. They can divide and distribute the sea into “emblazoned zones and fiery poles”. They way the poet and his friend Ramon view the world has changed. They way they experience the world has changed. The woman’s singing, which is an art, has deeply changed the poet and his friend’s perception of the world.
