The sea (symbol)
The sea is the most prominent symbol in the poem, but pinpointing what it means is not easy; in fact, the question of what the sea signifies is at the heart of the poem. On the broadest level, it represents nature, in that the shoreline encounter of woman and water is a microcosm of any encounter between human artist and natural world. It is inscrutable: it has some "genius" or form of knowledge inherent in it, but that meaning is not communicated via human language. The sea possibly represents inspiration, but the poem also throws into question how much the woman's song actually stems from the ocean. It may be a "tragic" image that evokes feelings of "solitude" or despair, but might also be "merely a place by which she walked to sing." More than anything, the speaker of the poem wants us to be careful of how we superimpose symbolic meanings on things like the sea in the first place, and aware that those meanings originate in our own creative minds.
Wind (symbol)
Along with the sea, the wind and its sounds are part of the natural world that contrasts with the singing woman. The wind, in particular, forms a thematic opposite to the woman's breath and voice, because it is described as "gasping," the "heaving speech of air" and "meaningless plungings." Whereas the woman's song is full of meaningful human language, the wind is a type of "speech" that is empty of any meaning that we can decode on our terms. The boundless, heaving wind reminds us that if we go looking for a "voice" in nature that we can automatically understand, we won't find one: meaning and order are generated out of nature by the human mind.
Fishing boat lights (symbol)
The lights that appear in the penultimate stanza play a central role in the speaker's vision of order: as night falls, the lights have the power to establish dominance and create a network of "zones" that organize the sea. The lights serve as an extension of the woman's song in that they impose meaning and order on nature: they symbolize the many creations (abstract like language, or physical like lights) by which humans make sense of the world.
The woman's singing (allegory)
The woman's song, the focal point of most of the poem, serves as an allegory or extended symbol for the process of human creativity. The woman, who is never described more specifically than as a "she," stands for any artistic maker, and her song, the words of which we are never told, stands for any artistic creation. The poem strongly asserts the woman's creative power, going as far as saying that she creates her own world. This process is mirrored in essentially any truly creative artwork, such as Stevens' poem itself: the artist creates their own world by reshaping meaning and perception in the minds of their audiences.
Sound (motif)
Sound is a vitally important sense in this poem: for both the woman and the sea, the speaker grapples with the distinction between what is merely "sound" and what constitutes a "voice." Sound is the primary mode through which meaning is communicated to the listener, so he searches for meaning in the "constant cry" of the ocean, the "grinding water and the gasping wind"; however, he ultimately acknowledges in stanza four that the "dark voice of the sea," "however clear" it manages to be, will never be anything more than noise, or "sound alone."
Size (motif)
Another way in which the poet evokes the difficulty of knowing and making sense of nature is through images of immense size. The ocean is a perfect image for this technique: its span and depth, its waves and wind, are all enormous. These images accumulate primarily in the fourth stanza, ending with "Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped / On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres / Of sky and sea," a setting that appears dauntingly and almost absurdly larger-than-life. This immensity of nature, contrasted with the solitary woman whose song manages to reshape this entire world, underscores the importance and difficulty of the artist's task to assign meaning and order to it.
Speech and words (motif)
As this is a poem, and Stevens is predominantly interested in the power of human creativity, spoken language is crucial. Speech, when associated with the sea, is incomplete and troubling: the sea is described as having a "dark voice" and "heaving speech" but it is also not the kind that we can understand. Speech is a human ability, epitomized by the singer and the poet. However, it is worth noting where speech is absent, or withheld: for one, we know the woman's song is "uttered word by word," but we never read her actual words; likewise, the speaker asks Ramon Fernandez for commentary, but never relays anything that Ramon says. In both of these cases, speech is implied but withheld, probably to indicate that the specific song or specific words are not as important as the universal significance of the singing, and of the onlookers' experience.
