The Emperor of Ice-Cream

For the Brian Moore novel, see The Emperor of Ice-Cream (novel).

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

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.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is a celebrated poem from Wallace Stevens's first collection of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, and is in the public domain. The poem "wears a deliberately commonplace costume," he wrote in a letter, "and yet seems to me to contain something of the essential gaudiness of poetry; that is the reason why I like it."

According to the critic Helen Vendler, quoted by Austin Allen, the ice-cream in the poem is being prepared for serving at a funeral wake.

In popular culture

• Composer Roger Reynolds wrote an avant garde, mixed-media dramatization of the poem for 8 vocal soloists, piano, percussion, and double bass in 1961–62.
• In 1985, composer Gary Kulesha published a revision of his clarinet quartet named after the poem.
• "Misha Chellam of the acoustic pop group Speechwriters LLC wrote a song entitled "The Emperor of Ice Cream" while in his high school folk-pop group Sid and Me.
• Ken Nordine, beat poet and innovator of a stylistic form known as "word jazz," recorded a rendition of Stevens's poem to the backing of eerily bubbly circus music on his 1994 album Upper Limbo.
• Alternative rock group They Might Be Giants used the phrase "finale of seem" in their 1988 song, "Pencil Rain".
• Stephen King made several allusions to this poem in his novels Salem's Lot and Insomnia and his collection of short stories Just After Sunset in the short story "Harvey's Dream", as well as his television miniseries, Kingdom Hospital.
• The poem was quoted in the film Pathology.
• Dean Koontz referenced this poem in his book The Good Guy.
• A soap made by the cosmetics company Lush is named "The Emperor of Icecream" after this poem.
• The song "The King of Cream" by The Love Kills Theory is a homage to this poem.
• The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1975) by Brian Moore is a coming-of-age novel set in Belfast.
• An Irish band called itself Emperor of Ice Cream, and released 2 EPs, Puerile and Skin Tight, in 1993.
• The hero of Tom Perotta's Joe College reflects on the poem throughout the novel, wondering what the ice cream symbolizes.
• The heroine of Laura McNeal's National Book Award-nominated novel Dark Water reads the poem for a high school class and wonders about its meaning.
• Spenser, the hero of Robert B. Parker's novel School Days quotes from the poem.
• Author Alan Moore was a member in a band named Emperors of Ice Cream which recorded two songs, "March of the Sinister Ducks" and "Old Gangsters Never Die".
• Anthony Cappella published a novel The Empress of Ice-Cream in 2010.
• The protagonist of Andrew Smith's novel Grasshopper Jungle frequently cites "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" as his favorite poem.
• Ronald Shannon Jackson quotes the poem in various Last Exit performances.

Bibliography

• Morse, Samuel French. "Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate – Harold Bloom's Vast Accumulation". The Wallace Stevens Journal. Volume 1, Numbers 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 1977)
• Stevens, Wallace. The Explicator. Vol VII (November 1948), unpaged.
• Vendler, Helen. Words Chosen Out of Desire. 1984: University of Tennessee Press.
• The Emperor of Ice Cream: Analysis and Study Guide

External links

• Explanations of the meaning of this poem by Helen Vendler and others