Multi Genres By Beth-Jo

Beth-Jo Gewirtz
Steven Wexler
Multigenre Literacy
February 10, 2010
Ice-Cream

In the early eighteenth century, Wallace Stevens first published his poem, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream.” It was immediately appreciated amongst the public and his peers, but it was not immediately clear what this poem was about. It is now clear Stevens had no intention of relating the title to the actual meaning of the poem. At first glance I thought the poem would be about a sweet cold dessert. I wasn’t sure what it was about until I’d read it through multiple times.
The first stylistic pattern I noticed was this poem was written into two different stanzas. Each stanza has eight lines, neither with a clear meter pattern. The first stanza is about one party while the second stanza is about a funeral or wake. The first stanza is about a party where in the kitchen the neighborhood women are having a good time. They are making ice cream “In kitchen cups concupiscent curds (line 3). These women are dressed scantly. “Let the wenches dawdle in such dress” (line 4). The enticing young men are bringing these women flowers to woo them. They are flowers wrapped in “last month’s newspapers”. Because they are not wrapped in cellophane or tied with yarn, the reader is led to believe the men do not have extra money. They don’t buy flowers; they pick them from the ground. The second stanza is about a different story and a different idea.
The second stanza is not about ice-cream, but about death. In line twelve, Stevens wrote “And spread it so as to cover her face.” We now know it is a wake and the woman is having a sheet she embroidered pulled over her face. The sheet is not long enough to cover her face and her feet at the same time. Short sheets were common among the poorer population in the 18th century. She had to be poor as she did not even have nice cutlery and plate-ware for her guests, “In kitchen cups concupiscent curds”. She only had cheap kitchen cups for people to eat ice-cream out of. She also did not have a nice clothing dresser, but an incomplete one. “Take from the dresser of deal, lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet”. Her dresser was used so frequently and so often broken, she could not afford new knobs. In this time period, wakes were often in the deceased’s home as a parlor would cost too much money.
Stevens not only used themes and non-pattern meter to write his favorite poem, he also used alliteration and repetition. In the first stanza, Stevens uses alliteration. “In kitchen cups concupiscent curds” (line 3). And then again in lines 7 and 8, “Let be be finale of seem, the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.” Alliteration is often used to put emphasis on certain words or phrases. In those two lines, he also uses repetition. When he used “be” twice in the first stanza, at first, I wondered if this wasn’t a grammatical mistake. But on my third reading of the poem, I realized it was important to the idea of the poem. It is to be taken seriously. It was meant to take down the appearances put up for others and fill those holes with reality.
In this poem, a woman has died and is lying during her wake. The sheet covering her is not large enough to cover both her face and her feet at the same time, but her friends don’t even notice. They are enjoying their time. By their friend’s passing, they have seen how fragile life is and how she did not waste hers. She did not waste her money on new dresser knobs or enough yarn to knit a large sheet. She had fun and made friends. She’d made enough friends to fill her kitchen with women making ice cream. But maybe these aren’t just her friends. Maybe these women are her family, or her work friends or roommates. These were women she was close enough with to not have to have worried about her “horny” feet showing. Stevens used “horny” to describe the woman’s feet. He did not use “horny” in a sexual way but in a descriptive way; meaning calloused. Her feet were calloused and “horny” from standing all day. Was she standing on the street corner, working as a prostitute? Then, that would make these women her sisters on the street? That also could lead the reader to believe the “roller of big cigars” mentioned in the first line of the first stanza could be her pimp or her manager.





Works Cited
“Reality and the Emperor of Ice Cream”. ThatsnotIt.Wordpress.Com. Claes Wrangel. 3 January 2007.
Stevens, Wallace. “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”. 100 Best-Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. 86-87. Print.
“The Emperor of Ice Cream”. PoemHunter.Com. JT Hutcherson. 28 March 2008.