The Emperor Of Ice-Cream Poem by Wallace Stevens

oh yonoos you make me hungry i do like ice-cream ohhhhhhh! ! ! ! ! my stomach crying because of you thax alot yours

I think that this is a poem written from a moment (biographical or not) of angry and rebellious atheism. As a fallen believer, I have written many such poems myself. And it was perhaps this poem that first empowered my falling-many years ago. There is no emperor (God) , there is only ice cream- the reality of cigars, muscles, concupiscence, deal, rough feet, plain dress, and the cold light of objectivity. 'Let BE be finale of SEEM'- There is no God, but ice cream is very real. Or, as the 'curds' are 'concupiscent, ' SEX is very real.

There is no obvious funeral or wake in this poem. People who are so recently dead that they are being covered by a sheet in their own beds are not about to be buried, nor are they subject to celebrations in the next room. Funerals usually do not take place in peoples' bedrooms (dressers are typically objects of furniture in bedrooms) . The second stanza is more likely a death room scene than a wake. The party with boys and wenches and the cigar-rolling caterer, ice cream, and flowers does not have to be related, as if in a linear narrative, to the woman in her bed being covered by the fantail-embroidered sheet, but it is thematically related, in sensuous exuberance; this is a high modernist poem, not a short story from 1877. (Do we insist that Marie in Section One of The Waste Land is somehow a business associate of the Hyancith Girl or of Tristan, a few lines later? No. We understand them to be thematically related) . The festive motto of the party with boys who bring flowers is also the same being-in-time/ seize-the-day motto that applies to the room of the newly dead: The only emperor/ Is the emperor of ice cream. I find the thematic power of the poem (which relies on the resonance of the two stanzas' images against each other, not on an obvious story) weakened by the attempt, common online, to narratize this poem into a wake, though it is possible to do so. But are funereal flowers brought wrapped in newspapers? No, but flowers brought to dates are. Why would boys bring flowers wrapped in newspaper to dawdling wenches at a wake? Do wenches dawdle in their usual dresses at wakes? It is more likely that they are dawdling at some undefined party. These two stanzas do not have to be easily spatially or temporally connected, because the thematic relationship-in the motto to seize life as one can-is dominant.

I've always loved this poem, for what it has to say, for how it was written and even the fact that it took me a long time to get into it, though the message is pretty straight forward. Maybe it was the vocabulary. I've been fascinated by it from the first reading. Anyhow, with the opening line, 'Call... The muscular one... concupiscent [lustful] curds...', I think Stevens is saying that life is grounded in the physical, and not only that, but also that we are driven and ruled by the yearning, pursuit and satisfaction of our desires, especially the physical ones. In fact, despite all of our history and great political movements and civilized accomplishments ('flowers wrapped in last months newspapers') , these simple needs and desires, even biological concerns, are at the core of everything we do. 'The emperor of ice cream' is simple desire personified, desire on an instinctual level. All this hustle and bustle, love and want of love, or just the attainment of a more extravagant luxury, this is life and it's who we are. 'Be (reality) ' really is the 'finale of seem'. Furthermore, I think Stevens admires the hustle and bustle of humanity going about its various pursuits. In the second stanza Stevens is confirming that being driven by desire is as it should be, because without desire life is cheap furniture like a 'dresser of deal', cold and colorless like dead flesh. In this funeral scene the only things to be noted with interest are the 'embroidered fantails' on a sheet that the deceased had tried to make more beautiful, more desirable. 'Let the lamp affix its beam, ' you can dress it up or look at it directly under the cold, bright lamp of the mortician, but in the end death is of little consequence. There is nothing in death, nothing to long for, nothing to admire.

The first stanza is about pleasure. The second stanza is about grief. The ice cream is used in both stanzas as a symbol of transience. These themes should be familiar to anyone who has read Stevens' poetry. I agree with Johann Cat that the insistence that the party in the first stanza is at a funeral is unnecessary. Some have given cogent explanations of the imagery as being typical of preparations for a funeral, such as a New Orleans funeral or Irish wake where raucous music is played. However, that is neither here nor there. It is an example of Stevens' sensory delight and playfulness. This is the poet who in another poem described himself as Tom-tom c'est moi. The second stanza is apparently widely misunderstood. The declamatory narrator is not speaking to a crowd now but rather to himself. He takes from the cheap, once fancier, dresser a sheet on which the dead woman embroidered fantails once. Who would know this? He spreads it on her, but it doesn't quite cover her feet. Her feet are not beautiful; they come only to show how cold she is and dumb. I hope you never have to visit a deceased loved one, such as your mother, in the reduced circumstances we find here. But there is nothing you can do about it. Let the lamp affix its beam; the only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Perhaps then, if not upon reading this poem, a deep up-pouring from some saltier well within you will burst its watery syllable.

She is dead the emperor Death is cold and sweet - the knobless casket, Finale: The big finish.

A compelling poem, which is actually about poverty-old clothes, 'last month's newspapers', 'the dresser of deal'. However, 'The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream'. Poorer children tend to love ice-cream. An obscure, but highly successful poem.

: Let be be finale of seem...............? ? a curious? 2nd stanza, to say the LEAST! !

I wish I was a member of this site back in 2007 or so- -I have learned so much reading these people's comments below! So much more informative than beautiful and I like this kind of remarks that flood the comments these days. I think these comments below say more and say it better and clearer than I so I shall just comment on the commentators that they are a brilliant group and obviously love the written word. We who love poetry salute you wherever you are.

I should have added to my comment that if the poem was written around the date of publication (1923) then it would have been during prohibition. Perhaps ice cream was the best hospitality that could be legally offered in those times.