The Emperor of Ice-Cream


"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first collection of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, and is in the public domain. Stevens' biographer, Paul Mariani, identifies the poem as one of Stevens' personal favorites from the Harmonium collection. 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".

Structure and meaning

The simple poetic structure is of two stanzas related by an identical closing verse in each stanza. The poem is only clarified in its allusion upon completion of the reading of the second stanza which identifies a "cold" and "dumb" body as common references to a dead body. In this case a dead body is being prepared for a funeral.
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. The use of holiday sweets and heavy desserts for funerals is part of the culture of varying civilizations. In this case the reference is likely to the pre-Castro Cuba which Stevens would visit during business trips to Florida. The "emperor" of ice cream is illustrated through imagery by Stevens as sufficiently ruddy to churn the ice-cream and blend its sugar in order to make the customary funeral treat used in the country.
Thomas C. Grey in his book on Stevens sees the poem as a harsh didactic lesson studying the use of the metaphor of 'coldness' in Stevens. As Grey states: "Stevens knows the corruptions of coldness as well as its beauties. Chief among them is the heartless selfishness, represented by the sweet sinister cold of 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream.' In the kitchen a cigar-rolling man whips 'concupiscent curds' of ice cream as the wenches come and go; in the adjoining bedroom, a dead woman lies in undignified discard, 'cold... and dumb' under a sheet, her horny feet protruding. Both rooms teach the cynical wisdom that 'The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream': what you see is what you get; look out for Number One; enjoy the sweet cold before the bitter cold claims you".
According to Norman Foerster, University professor and instigator of the New Humanist movement in American criticism, this poem has been discussed for a long time, but maybe we mistake an exact meaning of that. Foerster said, “At this funeral there is to be neither the pretense nor the fact of morbid grief.” Our lives include honest pursue and covetous moods to survive as recognizing of emperor. These are expressed by ice-cream in this poem. At the same time there is neither disrespect for the dead nor a blinking of the fact of poverty and death. The world of his poem is a realistic and stable one.
According to Syunsuke Kamei, an honorary professor of The University of Tokyo and a scholar of American literature, this poem is composed by Stevens for his daughter. Stevens has a strong sense of fulfillment of life. He did not see the death in a special light. This poem is telling us to take things easy but seriously. Stevens used the eccentric expression, The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Ice cream is an incarnation of a sense of fulfillment. It is easily melted, but it is a natural thing. By doing so, we notice the great worth of fleeting existence. Stevens tells us to enjoy the ice cream now. Ice-cream is a symbol of the summit of ordinary people’s delight.

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