Fabliau of Florida
"Fabliau of Florida" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.
Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach,
Move outward into heaven,
Into the alabasters
And night blues.
Foam and cloud are one.
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.
Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.
There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.
Interpretation
In a letter written in 1939, Stevens says that he has always liked this poem, not because of its sense, "because it does not have a great deal of sense", but because of "the feeling of the words and the reaction and images that the words create".[1]
Mark Strand asserts that the poem, though seemingly about the liminal space between sea and shore, is really about the liminal space between poem and reality. He suggests that this becomes clear once one appreciates the pun on the first and last words of the poem, namely "barque" and "surf".[2]
The poem may be compared to "Infanta Marina", which similarly explores dissolution of boundaries in nature. Here the boundaries are beach and heaven, foam and cloud.
Notes
References
- Stevens, Holly (ed.). Letters of Wallace Stevens. 1966: University of California Press.
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- "Earthy Anecdote"
- "Invective Against Swans"
- "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"
- "The Plot Against the Giant"
- "Infanta Marina"
- "Domination of Black"
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- "Ploughing on Sunday"
- "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges"
- "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores"
- "Fabliau of Florida"
- "Doctor of Geneva"
- "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile"
- "The Comedian as the Letter C"
- "From the Misery of Don Joost"
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- "Anecdote of Canna"
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- "Of the Surface of Things"
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- "The Place of the Solitaires"
- "The Weeping Burgher"
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- "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
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- "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"
- "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
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- "The Virgin Carrying a Lantern"
- "Stars at Tallapoosa"
- "Explanation"
- "Six Significant Landscapes"
- "Bantam in Pine-Woods"
- "Anecdote of the Jar"
- "Palace of the Babies"
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- "Cortège for Rosenbloom"
- "Tattoo"
- "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws"
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- "The Wind Shifts"
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- "Gubbinal"
- "Two Figures in Dense Violet Night"
- "Theory"
- "To the One of Fictive Music"
- "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion"
- "Peter Quince at the Clavier"
- "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
- "Nomad Exquisite"
- "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad"
- "The Death of a Soldier"
- "Negation"
- "The Surprises of the Superhuman"
- "Sea Surface Full of Clouds"
- "The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade"
- "Lunar Paraphrase"
- "Anatomy of Monotony"
- "The Public Square"
- "Indian River"
- "Tea"