need help with poetry analysis

[vkbrasby]

If someone could help me with some poetry analysis I would greatly appreciate it. I need to analyze Wallace Stevens' poems "Anecdote of the Jar" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" and I really don't have a good idea of what either of them is talking about. Please help if you can and if you need me to post the poems themselves let me know. Thank you!!

Valerie

[hellsapoppin]

I always found Stevens' work to be far too complex for my simple mind. The one theme that ran through both poems as I recall was transformation. In 'Anecdote' his work influences others while in 'Order' a poet is transformed by an imagined song. I believe Stevens was an artist who was greatly impacted by World War I.

Unfortunately, I cannot recall if he was thought to be a part of the ''Lost
Generation'' that found itself in Europe in the 20s or if he viewed the old order as vulnerable and on the verge of apocalyptic destruction. But there may be something to that.

I'll search a little on this ........

[hellsapoppin]

this link might help you find more data:

http://www.wallacestevens.com/links.php

[vkbrasby]

Thanks for your help! I appreciate it!

[rgdmalaysia]

I'm not a huge fan because I think he sometimes (or most of the time LOL)wrote in a deliberately inscrutable way. However, I do think Wallace Stevens used metaphor and simile as well as any poet I've ever read and he's never boring.

Planting the seed of a an idea or inspiration and what how it opens a mind and/or changes thinking is partly what "Jar" is about I think...."Key West" I always thought was about the poet's fight to reproduce with words what he or she sees versus the reality(a common Stevens theme.... He even wrote a poem called "Not Ideas aboiut the thing but the thing itself") .

I recall reading that Stevens worked basically his whole life for an insurance company. Finally becoming the vice-president....I believe he was also a lawyer.