Customer Reviews

The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems

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Wallace Stevens was one of the best poets of the twentieth century, with his richly atmospheric writing and multilayered themes about religion, nature and the imagination. "The Emperor of Ice Cream" is a good introduction to his work, collecting various poems into one volume.

"Let the lamp affix its beam/The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream," Wallace writes in the title poem. Other poems included are the eerie "Tattoo" ("The webs of your eyes/Are fastened/To the flesh and bones of you/As to rafters or grass"), the thirteen-part poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," the haunting "Domination of Black" ("I saw how the night came,/Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks"), and the languid, semi-spiritual "Sunday Morning."

The Dover Thrift collection does a good job of showing the various kinds of poetry that Stevens wrote -- some are infused with color, some with darkness, some with a rich overtone, some very brief like the tiny "Valley Candle." Many of Stevens' best poems are included in here.

One thing that Stevens' writing always has is beauty -- even in the weird ones. With only a few words he can evoke images that are exquisite, soothing, even eerie ("My candle burned alone in an immense valley"). He also infuses his poetry with intense colors and plenty of nature references, birds and trees, snow and rain and wind.

"The Emperor of Ice Cream" -- despite the somewhat silly title -- is an excellent showcase for some of Stevens' best works. Definitely worth checking out for fans of richly-conceived verse.

Two words pretty much sum up this collection: PUBLIC DOMAIN. It's only got what is available to reprint for free--Stevens' early poems. Some of these are nice, of course, but unless all you're looking for is Stevens' early poems you'd be better off with "Collected Poetry and Prose," or "Collected Poems," or "The Palm at the End of the Mind."

After Whitman and Dickinson, Stevens is the American poet. The great beauty of his lines is musical and lyrical, colorful and rich with light.His lines have memorable( and re-memberable quality) that few poets can match. He has a Keatsian long- line aesthetic feeling, a sense of sensual reality, an experiential touch .This combined with a reflectiveness which makes and aches at a harmony of its own.

Who can match lines like, (" Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings of those white elders, but escaping, left only Death's ironic scraping" or " Deer walk our mountains / and in the isolation of the sky at evening/ Casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations/ as they go downward to darkness on extended wings.")

" A poet makes a music of his own

and in his inner dissonance reflects

a star a sea a world forever home

in words whose Beauty

Lines of Light attest."

This is a resourceful book with a good assortment of Stevens' poetry. There is a decent amount of background on Stevens as well as many of his more influential poems. Overall, this is a good book to add to any poetry collection.

The poems are okay. The Emperor of Ice-cream stands out from the others.