Emperor of Ice-Cream seems like a fun child-like sort of title or name. As the poem ends with a description of a woman and "her horny feet" explaining "how cold she is, and dumb," this may be far from a child's poem.
The beginning says, "Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds." The picture is a muscular man who rolls cigars, "big" ones, and he is carrying ice-cream. The muscles of the man are able to handle the hard ice-cream.
The next part describes boys and girls together doing their own thing which means something once after the last part of the poem is read.
Next, the poem talks about a dresser. The footnotes say "deal" is "Plain, unfinished wood." Stevens describes the deal as "Lacking the three glass knobs." Usually a dresser has a few knobs to open each drawer. After describing this, Stevens writes, "She" referring to a woman which means there is a female character participating. Looking closely at how Stevens describes this she character seems odd. "If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb."
"Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face." There is someone the narrator is asking to do this. It could be the muscular man, but it doesn't say for sure. But, from the description of the deal and what the narrator wants someone to do, the dresser may be some kind of sturdy coffin, for the narrator is asking someone to cover this woman's face with the fantails.
The meaning of Emperor is someone who rules provinces or certain peoples all together. Ice-Cream describes the woman. Going back to the descriptions of her - horny feet, cold and dumb. Horns make sounds. So, horny feet could mean the lady is kicking or trying to make sounds with her feet. Stevens says once again, "If her horny feet protrude, they come to show how cold she is, and dumb." Finally the words - " Let the lamp affix its beam," hints that the murderer is taking this woman in secret in the night to bury her.
These versus conclude the woman is being murdered or kidnapped. So, going back to the description of the boys and girls, the scene comes to be a funeral. The emperor has taken the cream and made it ice. Cream is soft and sensual like femininity is. The ice is the coldness of death. The emperor of Ice-Cream unfortunately owns her, taking her down.
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Interesting post . . .
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that I read it, because it made me think about the poem again, and this time I actually got to think about the poem. The first time I read it a few words reminded me of an essay from Brevity, and no matter how hard (hard and cold) I tried, I couldn't get the imagery from that essay out of my head.
But now that I'm thinking, about this poem and the whole cubism thing, here's my take:
It's kind of a day-in-the life, or something of that sort. A day in the life of humanity. There's big guys clomping around, there's celebrating, there's death, there's ice cream, there's dating and flirting, etc. All sorts of things are happening to all sorts of people, and no one event (not even death) is going to stop the steam engine from blowing. Which is where the whole emperor aspect comes in: Things may seem significant to us, may seem to stop the world at times, we may even let some tragic or blessed event rule our own worlds--but the idea of anything we (as singular beings} experience ruling the actual world; well, it's as ridiculous as an emperor of ice cream.
No matter how great or horrible things are, there's always plenty of ways to see the world. All we have is one tiny beam of light in a giant dark abyss. One tiny beam of light, and a bagillion places to affix it.