The Idea of Order at Key West Essay Questions

How are the woman and the sea alike, and how are they different? Why is this difference important?

Both possess a "voice" that the poem's speaker sees as having some inherent meaning, and they are both primarily perceived through sound. However, the sea cannot communicate in human terms; it lacks the mind and language to be understood in the same way. Even though the woman's song is inspired by the sea, it takes the sea's meaning and transforms it into something people who are listening can understand on an emotional level. This is the central point of the poem because it demonstrates the essential power of human creativity.

What effect does the woman's song have on the listeners?

The speaker is profoundly moved by the song, as he describes in the final two stanzas. His perspective on the world is temporarily shifted: instead of seeing the harbor and dark sea as he normally would, possibly feeling unsettled by fear of the unknown, he sees them suddenly as perfectly organized, mastered and tamed by the fishing boat lights. For the speaker, this is a reflection of the power of human intellect he has witnessed in the woman's song: the mind is able to create meaning out of the chaos of nature and impose "order" on it.

What is the significance of the title of the poem?

"The Idea of Order at Key West" correctly raises expectations for a highly philosophical, metaphysical poem. Key West is an apt setting for the poem because it allows Stevens the vibrant imagery of the beach and the sea as a symbolic encounter between human and nature. However, the Floridian island is less important than the mental acrobatics the speaker goes through while there. He is in pursuit of "order," the way in which human artists can make sense out of nature's confusion. Importantly, this order is first and foremost an "idea," more so than it is a concrete reality, because what changes after hearing the song is not the physical world but the way the speaker sees and thinks about the world. Therefore, the entire process of creation / meaning-making / changed perceptions happens inside the human mind.

Why do you think Stevens chose to break the poems into these stanzas, and what is the effect of the iambic pentameter?

The stanza order allows a steady progression of ideas: the first three stanzas build the speaker's thought experiment with increasing complexity, and then climaxes in the long fourth stanza, in which the divine creative powers of the woman are raised to their highest level. The strict metrical form is perhaps Stevens' own form of "order" imposed on the poem, giving it structure to counterbalance its abstract and hard-to-grasp ideas. The form also links his poem to a long tradition of lyric and epic poetry in which the divine spirit of inspiration, or the Muse, is of key importance. Since Stevens is directly tackling the question of poetic inspiration, the form helps bring his poem into indirect conversation with this prior legacy.

How is the sea characterized through imagery? Does the poem ever really decide what role the sea plays in the woman's song-making?

The sea is first and foremost a set of sounds, of crashing waves and water and a "cry" that the speaker hears. The physical images of the sea build up in stanza four, where it takes on monumental size and depth as an intimidating contrast to the lone woman. However, the tension between woman and water never really resolves into one fixed relationship. At different moments, the sea appears to be her inspiration (stanza two), or completely irrelevant (stanza three), or a subject to the new laws of reality created by her song (stanza four). Overall, the sea is a paradox, because its vast unknowability might inspire human artwork, but eventually human creations in turn dominate and redefine the sea on our own terms.