Key West

The poem “Idea of Order at Key West” perfectly fits for further discussion as the relationship between imagination, reality and how they are affected by art remain ambiguous. The action in the poem remains open for interpretation as the narrator’s perception of the scene and the world shifts, so does the reader’s. By blending the image of a woman with the powerful and majestic sea, Stevens asserts that the sea is the inspiration for the “she”, while the setting, the sun and the beach, set up the path for the reader to pass through. “Idea of Order at Key West” asserts that art has the power to greatly alter the way that reality is viewed and how interactions in the world take place. Stevens tells the reader that the woman “was the single artificer …show more content…
The woman creates a new world view through her song for all and the stark impression of nature, forces the art of the new experience and the relationship of seduction, for both the narrator and the reader. Here, the singer is detached from the listeners and Stevens might make an obvious wish for the role of the reader to also be seduced by the woman in the poem and be also changed by her song. The interpretative freedom arises in how the reader chooses to fall into the relationship with the woman, the setting and also the work. How the reader experiences the setting during and after reading, establishes their own connection with art and reality. The reader is engaged as an observer, a companion witness to the two men on the shore, standing right there with the two, hearing the woman sing and taking away from the song and the sea, a deeply personal message and view. Another poem that sets the stage for active reader engagement and creative reading is Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar”. The space that the poem creates room for interpretive freedom and calls for the reader to do what they wish with the imagery in the text. This particular poem highlights the contrast between nature and what is man-made. The first stanza …show more content…
The amplification almost works backwards from the careful placement of the jar, to the increased awareness of the surroundings as the reader also becomes more involved with the short poem. This is interesting because the reader engagement creates the increased importance of the seemingly insignificant object, to seem larger than the natural surroundings that it is placed in. The jar becomes part of the landscape or even a prominent fixture within the natural scene in which it doesn’t belong. Stevens invites the reader in to think about their own surroundings and if they can draw any correlation to the jar and themselves. Stevens presents the idea of assimilation, forcing the reader to think about how well they would adapt if they too, were a gray jar in the wilderness. Does this experience create a more intensified jar/person or rather just another dot on the landscape? The reader can