Imagery by the Sea

Wallace Stevens’ poetry contains several allusions to some sort of hidden spirituality or concept of a greater power. ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ is a lulling tale that mixes the rhapsody of a woman’s’ wandering song with the power of the mysterious and yet familiar sea. The confusion as to who is singing the song, the sea or a person walking along its beaches, is parallel to each person’s attempt to try and differentiate between what is human and what is potentially derived from some higher power. The author also asserts independence in the woman’s voice, saying that she ‘strides alone’, she ‘was the single artificer of the world’, and that ‘she was the maker of the song she sang’. The mingling of references to the sky, sea, air, horizon, and water paint a visual picture of the scene, and yet despite this concreteness the imagery points to something much more powerful and otherworldly. By combining the song of a woman by the sea with beautiful visualization and abstract concepts, Stevens’ creates a tale that the reader is free to interpret and mold into something personal and individual.