disillusionment of ten o'clock, by wallace stevens

the houses are haunted
by white night-gowns.
none are green,
or purple with green rings,
or green with yellow rings,
or yellow with blue rings.
none of them are strange,
with socks of lace
and beaded ceintures.
people are not going
to dream of baboons and periwinkles.
only, here and there, an old sailor,
drunk and asleep in his boots,
catches tigers
in red weather.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, 52-53)

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Most commentators relate this poem, in one way or another, with Stevens' childhood: an incident in which he woke up neighbors, etc.  There is something childlike about the both the sentiments and the rhythms in this poem:  'purple with green rings, / or green with yellow rings...'  My take on the poem is that it somewhat bemoans the lack of imagination among Stevens' contemporaries.  His father did not lack humor and imagination, it would seem, but my own growing-up years in southeastern Pennsylvania left me with the impression that imagination was not particularly valued among Pennsylvanians.  My Irish relatives in the mountains there made jokes about leprechauns, but that was about the extent of it.  Is it due to the loss of enchantment of the modern world?  Or to the strict channeling of imagination into religious and spiritual avenues among the various religious groups of the area? 

As usual, our hero, Wallace Stevens, yearns for something exotic and imaginative, and tosses to the wind words like 'baboons' and 'periwinkles' (in the same line!), and leaves us with the image of the drunken sailor who 'catches tigers / in red weather.'  But is alcohol-intoxication the only way to access such dreams?  Although much has been made of Stevens' own relationship with the bottle, he did know another way, through the writing of poetry.

Comments

[Lisa]

I could be way off base but I think people that go to bed at ten O'clock are Puritans. The haunting is the guilt which people punish themselves for sins. The white and lack of colors and straight laced are because of forbidden pleasures. The sailor has no such conscience and has wild dreams with the aid of mind numbing drink. The tigers in red weather refers to prostitutes and sex dreams.

[justin bieber supra]

I "like" you on Facebook. Would love these for my oldest boy!

[Belstaff Jacket]

i went to the same school as patrick. i remeber those girls from my school who wrote in. they were white trash...i always felt so bad for them.