Explanation of the poems" The Emperor of

Ice-Cream" and "Anecdote of the Jar" by

Wallace Stevens
Tanzila Fatima
Roll no: 53
M.phil English Literature
Institute of Southern Punjab, Multan.
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Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a twentieth-century American poet. He

was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He attended Harvard University as an

undergraduate from 1897 to 1900. He planned to travel to Paris as a writer, but after a working

briefly as a reporter for the New York Herald Times, he decided to study law. He graduated with

a degree from New York Law School in 1903 and was admitted to the U.S. Bar in 1904. He

practiced law in New York City until 1916.

Wallace Stevens was among the most revered leaders of the 20th century Modernist movement

in American poetry. He was a contemporary of modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound,

and William Carlos Williams, but lived and wrote largely outside of the artistic circles of other

poets, spending four decades as an insurance executive at Hartford Accident and Indemnity

Company. He did not fully emerge as a poet of renown until relatively late in life. He was 44
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when his first book, Harmonium (1923), appeared, and more than 70 when he twice won the

National Book Award (1950 and 1954) and the Pulitzer Prize (1955). Harmonium contained

many of what would become Stevens’ defining works: “Sunday Morning,” “Peter Quince at the

Clavier,” “The Snow Man,” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and “The Emperor of

Ice Cream,” among many others. In 1934 he published Ideas of Order, an even denser and

murkier rumination on reality, but one which nevertheless included one of his masterpieces,

“The Idea of Order in Key West.” Key West was a locale to which Stevens first traveled in 1922,

on a business trip, and where he would return many times until 1940, drawing writing ideas from

his travel. Over the next two decades, Stevens produced five more poetry collections: Owl’s

Clover (1936), revised as The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937); Parts of a

World (1942); Transport to Summer (1947); and The Auroras of Autumn(1950), which received

the National Book Award. Stevens’ interest in long poems increased steadily, beginning with

“The Comedian as the Letter C” in Harmonium and continuing with poems such as Notes

Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942) and “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” in The Auroras of

"Autumn. His investment in complex philosophical explorations of perception and metaphysics

likewise continued to deepen. His Collected Poems in 1955 was awarded his second National

Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

His relation to Modernism (or any particular school of poetry) is a matter of debate. Scholars

generally agree that Stevens' style, derived from his preoccupation with symbolic images and the

peculiarities of language, has more in common with the French Symbolists and Stephane

Mallarme in particular than with any previous Anglophone verse.

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His late poetry is characterized by dense symbolism and intense concentration on philosophical

questions, although Robert Frost and other critics (most prominently Randall Jarrell) have

derided Stevens' late tendency toward impenetrable and abstract verse. Like many modernists,

Stevens confronted doubt and loss of traditional verities. For Stevens, truth was approachable

through what he called the "Supreme Fiction," best captured in the supreme work of art, the truth

of which the mind can apprehend through the imagination. "Poetry/ Exceeding music must take

the place/ Of empty heaven and its hymns," he wrote, and again, "God and the imagination are

one." Stevens approaches spirituality not through mysticism, belief, or tradition, but through

poetic imagination. The imagination conjures a description of reality out of ever-changing

phenomena. Such imaginative reasoning was not dry philosophical speculation for Stevens, but a

passionate engagement in finding order and meaning.

After achieving a host of late-career accolades, Stevens began succumbing to cancer in 1955. A

chaplain in Stevens’ hospital reported that Stevens converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, a

claim staunchly rejected by his daughter, Holly, and made dubious by the lifelong theme in

Stevens’ poetry of finding new rationality in what he saw as a post-theological modern age.

Stevens passed away in August of 1955 and was buried in Hartford.

Harold Bloom, a leading literary scholar, has called him "the best and most representative

American poet of our time" and "a vital part of the American mythology."

Anecdote of the jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
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The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Analysis:
"Anecdote of the Jar" by Wallace Stevens is a poem that has been interpreted in many ways by

literary scholars and critics since its publication. It was written in 1919 and published in

Harmonium, the first book from Wallace Stevens, in 1923. One interpretation of this poem is that

It explores the struggle between humans and nature. Every creature, plant, and organism in

nature plays a role in supporting the rest of the environment. Humans, on the other hand, tend to

take over when they enter a new place, destroying everything in their paths and, as a result,

disrupting the delicate balance that existed before their intrusion. Humans introduce artificiality

into the world, converting nature from its original state of vitality and freedom to one of

repression and control. Every creature, plant, and organism in nature plays a role in supporting

the rest of the environment. Humans, on the other hand, tend to take over when they enter a new

place, destroying everything in their paths and, as a result, disrupting the delicate balance that

existed before their intrusion. Humans introduce artificiality into the world, converting nature
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from its original state of vitality and freedom to one of repression and control.

The jar is also personified. It is described as having “made the slovenly wilderness/ Surround

the hill” (3-4). It is more than just an object; it takes on human characteristics, such as the

ability to interact with and affect the world around it. It represents something much larger than

itself; it represents humanity and civilization. The jar’s interaction with the wilderness of

Tennessee reflects humans’ interaction with the natural world. In addition to the jar’s

personification, the relationship between the narrator and the jar reinforces the argument that

the jar is representative of humanity as a whole.

I placed a jar in Tennessee(1)

The fact that the narrator, “I” in the first line, places the jar into the scene, introducing it into the

wilderness, demonstrates that it is an extension of him. The jar did not appear on the hill on its

own, it originated from the nameless, faceless narrator. The power behind the jar’s influence

over and interaction with the environment is the narrator, a human being. Humans do not always

directly. The most important action the jar performs is “[taking] dominion everywhere” (9).

This line reveals the true power the jar has over the wilderness. The wilderness was suppressed,

“sprawled around, no longer wild,” when it “rose up to [the jar]” (6, 5). While the jar is merely

sitting on a hill, it is capable of exerting such a force over nature that it tames the unruly

wilderness, forcing it to surrender to its control. Stevens contrasts the jar with the environment in

which is it placed, emphasizing their differences. He states it plainly in the last line when he

says the jar is “like nothing else in Tennessee” (12) Firstly, the jar is an inanimate object,

manmade, not a part of the nature surrounding it. The wilderness is made up of living creatures,

plants, and organisms that “give of bird or bush” (11). Trees and animals do not exist isolated

from everything around them. Instead, they provide for and sustain each other. Secondly, the
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jar is immobile, described as either “upon a hill” or “upon the ground” (2, 7).While the

wilderness “rose up” and “sprawled around,” proving it is capable of movement (5, 6).

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

. Lastly, the jar is described as “gray and bare” (10). It is dull, plain, and ordinary. The

“slovenly” wilderness is filled with color and texture: leaves and trees, flowers and plants, as

well as the diverse creatures that live in an environment such as this. By employing these

contrasts, Stevens sets up two opposing forces that make up both sides of the struggle between

the jar, representing humanity, and the wilderness, which represents the natural world.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
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Analysis:
The Emperor of Ice-Cream is the most popular poem of Wallace Stevens. His theory of poetry

is the theory of life. Stevens considered poetry as a mode of thinking. According

to him, reality was what the imagination constructed as a response to desire. For

him imagination was equivalent to aspiration. He defines poetry as ‘a holiday in reality.” The

Emperor of Ice-cream” was first published in 1922 in the collection Harmonium. The poem

begins with cigars and ice cream being prepared. Women ("wenches") are hanging out and boys

are bringing flowers. These are preparations for a funeral, or perhaps more likely a wake. We

learn that it's a she, and that she has "horny feet." Not attractive. Beyond that, we don't really

know much about this woman, other than the she used to like to sew, and that her dresser is

missing some knobs. The speaker calls for a lamp to be lit, and reminds us that "The only

emperor is the emperor of ice-cream." Stevens "plots" the story by structuring the poem as a

series of commands from an unknown master of ceremonies, directing, in a diction of extreme

oddness, the neighbors in their funeral duties. Both the symbolic kitchen stanza and the symbolic

bedroom stanza end with the same third-order refrain echoed by the title. "The only emperor is

the emperor of ice-cream." The title, in simple words, means something like this: since life is like

ice-cream, the ruling standard of life and its reality is the emperor of that fact itself; therefore,

enjoy life as you'd enjoy ice-cream itself. The poet speaks in the voice of a man (the poet's

spokesman), addressing the neighbors to carry out the funeral in certain ways. It is common in

some communities to satisfy the dead in this way, with food and drink, after a time of mourning.

This is common in tribal communities; and it is suggested that Stevens has based the poem on his

experience of Canadian tribes, or maybe on some Red Indian American tribe. In the first stanza,
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the man calls for a person muscular enough to whip up desserts by hand; perhaps there is not

enough money for an expensive mixer. People must eat and drink when they arrive the poor

woman's house to attend her 'wake' and funeral. This implies that we need not grieve and fast and

torture the living when one who has died. The desserts will have to be served in kitchen cups;

there is no fine china or crystal. The common people who will attend will come in their everyday

clothes, rather than formal attire; the flowers will be brought in last month's newspapers, rather

than in vases, or as garlands. All these details suggest that there is nothing fanciful, nothing

romantic, or nothing special about death and its aftermath; indeed, death is too ordinary and

natural to be shocking. Stevens avoids the euphemisms and denials that often accompany the

details and descriptions of death. From the second stanza, the poem continues with the

preparations. The man asks someone to take a sheet from the top of a broker dresser to cover the

dead woman's face; even if that means that her ugly feet will protrude from the too short

covering. Instead of lighting soft and dim candles, the bright light should be turned to glare on

her body, to show that she is now cold and silent in death. Stevens is insisting that one must look

directly at death, in all its mater-of- factness, and see it not as a state of some mystical or

spiritual transformation, but rather as actual fact to be faced and dealt with. To romanticize death

is to invite more grief than less. The wake (ceremony) takes place in the woman's own house,

rather than in a church; and the preparation are inexpensive and minimal, including making the

food in her own kitchen; this reflects Stevens's insistence that death should not be romanticized,

idealized, or sentimentalized. Perhaps if death will inevitably melt everyone away to nothing, no

matter how tasty or delicious they may be while alive, in terms of the ice-cream metaphor. So, in

the classic tradition of carpe diem, one should seize the day while one is able to do so. The
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mixture and complication of the implications in the meaning of the image of ice-cream seems to

suggest that life and death are inextricable bound and blended together.

Bibliography
https://interestingliterature.com/2016/08/31/a-short-analysis-of-
wallace-stevenss-anecdote-of-the-jar/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14575/ane
cdote-of-the-jar
https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-
emperor-of-ice-cream.html
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Stephane_Mallarme
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