Defining the Figure of Capable Imagination: ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’, ‘Asides on the Oboe’ and Related Poems

Abstract

In this chapter, I want to discuss the figure of the poet in several poems, most notably ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ (1934), and to do so in terms that emphasize the narrative and mimetic possibilities of such a figure. Stevens is responding to the tradition of the romantic bard, but he can no longer embrace the vision that the poet is the acknowledged legislator of the world. What Stevens enacts is the effort of knowing, feeling, and creating.