This poem describes preparations for a wake (a social gathering in memory of a deceased person). The two stanzas contrast the lively and youthful scene in the kitchen with the dead body laid out in the bedroom. Life and death are presented side-by-side. Stevens said the poem is “about being, as distinguished from seeming to be” (L 341).  Does this help you interpret the refrain, “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream”?  Stevens called this his favorite poem because it contains “the essential gaudiness of poetry” (L 263).  [“gaudy” = bright and colorful but in bad taste] What do you think he meant by this? Continue reading The Emperor of Ice-Cream →

Stevens said, “This group of poems is not meant to be a collection of epigrams or ideas, but of sensations” (L 251).  So don’t worry about trying to figure out what the blackbird “means.”  It doesn’t have one meaning.  Instead, ask yourself how each episode makes you feel.  We look at life from many different perspectives. Continue reading Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird  →